ICANN51-LA Sun12Oct2014-Newcomer Welcome Session-en · LOS ANGELES – Newcomer Welcome Session Sunday, October 12, 2014 – 10:00 to 17:00 ICANN – Los Angeles, USA JANICE DOUMA

LOS ANGELES – Newcomer Welcome Session EN

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LOS ANGELES – Newcomer Welcome Session Sunday, October 12, 2014 – 10:00 to 17:00 ICANN – Los Angeles, USA

JANICE DOUMA LANGE: I’m going to give this a try while we work on our technical issues. Good

morning! That’s fantastic. For everyone who’s sitting towards the back,

I swear no matter what you’ve heard about Momma J, I do not bite. Get

a little bit closer, because we’re going to try to keep you here all day, to

keep enjoying the learning about ICANN. My name is Janice Douma

Lange. I am the Engagement Manager for ICANN. I manage the

Fellowship and Newcomer Programs and work on outreach with our GSE

Teams around the world. I naturally was selected to manage this

program all day on Sunday, which was made exclusively to bring our

Newcomers to an ICANN Meeting into the fold.

My job is also my passion, so I’m very lucky to be able to do both at the

same time. I’m an evangelist for ICANN. I started in 2007. I didn’t even

know what ICANN was. I didn’t know it existed. The Internet

Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers couldn’t have been more

foreign to a schoolteacher who worked at Walt Disney World for 21

years. Here I am in 2014. The Internet affects each and every one of us.

Social media. All of us are end users. At the end of the day, our

fingertips touch the keyboards.

No matter where you come from, what sector, academic, technical,

government, running a registry, looking at starting a business, all of us

are end users and all of us have interests in the Internet and what it

means to us. Therefore you’re all here and you want to get included in

this crazy thing called ICANN, so welcome.


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This day is going to be split up into two parts. We’re going to start to

talk a little bit about this Newcomer experience, to make sure all of you

understand we’re starting on the same playing field. Everyone around

that you’re looking at has probably not been to an ICANN Meeting

before, so they’re going to be sharing the same experiences you are all

week. Get to know those faces. Get to know the other folks with the

green ribbon that says “Newcomer” on your registration badge, and

you’ll know you’re not alone this week. We’ll talk about the Internet

ecosystem, which includes a lot more than ICANN. We’re one piece of

the total whole of the ICANN Internet ecosystem.

We’ll talk about the multistakeholder model, which is how we get the

work done in ICANN. That’s our first two hours this morning. Everything

about this session is interactive. Everything is about you asking

questions of other folks that are hopefully going to join me up here at

the table. Most of the sessions this week are going to ask you to listen,

comment and ask questions at the end. In this room I encourage you to

put that hand up as soon as something is said that you don’t understand.

I don’t have time constraints today, other than getting you all out to

lunch and then bringing you back. This day is about your engagement,

your questions, your learning. If there’s a question I’m going to have

two of my Fellows – Sarah standing here and Valentina towards the back

– there with mics. As soon as your hand is raised they’re going to run to

you and you can ask any question, going along in the presentation of

these people here next to me that you don’t see yet.

When you come back in the afternoon we’re going to really dig into

ICANN. What is our remit? What do we do and how do we do it? The


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first thing we’ll talk about is policy support, which is all about you. Our

Policy Support Staff is in support of your work. We don’t create policy.

Staff does not create policy. It’s you – the end user – who’s coming in

here to add your voice to the Internet. We’ll have someone from our

Policy Team to talk more about that.

We’re going to talk about the IANA function. A lot of talk about that this

week and the transition from the NTIA. There’s a great session

tomorrow, Monday, all about IANA. We’ll do a little brush on it today

but most of it will be tomorrow and we’ll encourage you to go to that

session.

The next would be our DNS Industry Engagement, which is a brand new

term that we use. It’s to encompass our registries, our registrars, our

IDNs, technical work, and our Global Domains Division. It’s everything

about how we engage as a community with the industry that we’re all in

– the domain name system. Our Security, Stability and Resiliency Team

will follow up at the end. At 4:00 pm we’re going to do something very

different that we haven’t done before.

We’re going to have you all stand up, which will be great at the end of

that day. We’re going to break out into four groups – the government

sector, the business sector, the civil society and the technical sector. We

want you to understand that even though we’re going to talk today

about the communities and the multistakeholder model of ICANN – the

government community, the country code naming community, the

generic name supporting organization – the gNSO – all these acronyms

will make sense sooner or later.


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At the end of this program we’re going to talk about sectors. If you’re

from an academic background, from a technical background, from a

government background, working in civil society – we’re going to have

some of our staff and community members help you understand how to

get through the week; where the great sessions are that will help engage

you into what you’re interested in. We’ll be here for half an hour or so,

off the record, no mics. It will just be you around the room just having

to be able to engage one on one with some of our experts and help you

with the week.

I can talk a while, can’t I? That’s good and bad. A little housekeeping for

everyone. In this main room and all day today we will have

interpretation. In the back of the room we have English, French and

Spanish. If your native language is French or Spanish and you’d like to

listen to our talk today in your language, in the back of the room there

are headsets. Always in these main rooms – Beverly Hills and Los

Angeles next door to us – on this floor, they’ll have headsets and

interpretation. We want you to be able to follow along in your own

language if that’s more comfortable for you.

We need everybody’s phone off and computers muted, otherwise weird

things like what happened at the beginning of this program will happen

to you, and I’ll save you that embarrassment. As I said before, questions

are encouraged, interaction and engagement with us is what we’re here

for. Honestly, if I could have all of you get up and do a shimmy‐shake

and let a deep breath out to understand how relaxed we want you to be

here in this room all day today, and truly use us and abuse us in this

room to get the answers that you need, or the best that we can get.


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What are the goals of the day? First of all we want to enable fast and

effective engagement. What that means is there are over 200 sessions

this week. This is only the first. That is a lot of information to take in.

When you're new, and you may have come here singly, on your own,

you’re going to feel lost. You’re going to feel like you're on the LA

freeways with no way out. We don’t want that to happen. We want to

provide you today with tools and networking opportunities, so that you

can quickly get engaged into the conversation and the sessions and not

feel as if you're here alone.

We want to help you understand who we are. There are a lot of

misnomers, understandings about who ICANN is and what ICANN does.

Today we want to take all those misunderstandings away and share and

engage. We do provide mentorship and guidance. How does that

happen? The ICANN Booth is on this level. We also call it the Newcomer

Welcome Area. It’s a place you can go every day, starting today, through

Wednesday. We are open the same hours of registration – 8:00 am until

6:00 pm. Staff in the Booth are alumni of our Fellowship Program – folks

that have been new once. They’ve been through a fast and effective

engagement and they know what it takes to get through this week.

They’re there to welcome you, they’re there to provide you a place to

relax and breath, to talk to someone like yourself. They’re there to help

you build your agendas, because they’ve been through these weeks

before, they can help you get more focused, and in the end maybe just

to help you find somebody for lunch or dinner and network with them.

The Booth is yours, as Newcomers.


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Please use it every day and come and visit us. Obviously we want to

send you off in a better place than when you came. There’s nothing that

makes me sadder than when people have left this week and I hear back

and they say, “I didn’t understand a word anyone said, I didn’t feel

engaged, I didn’t feel like anybody wanted me there.” That’s not a

feeling we want. Why? Because you’re not the only one.

This is one of my favorite pictures! I remember in San Juan in 2007

when it was my first ICANN Meeting. I’d been with ICANN about five

months and I worked in a very focused area in ICANN. I didn’t even

know all the staff. We were only about 50 to the 400 we are now. I was

sent to the ICANN Meeting in San Juan and I honestly felt that everyone

else knew each other. In the hallways it was just a buzz. Everybody’s

talking to everybody else. I honestly went through an entire day –

before I lost my voice – just feeling out of place.

I felt like the company probably spent money they shouldn’t have on

me, because I didn’t think I was going to get anything from it. I was very

lucky to meet one of our Board Members, George Sadowsky, who wasn’t

a Board Member at the time. He found that lost look. He reached out

and said, “Are you new?” I said, “Yes, I’m a new staff.” He said, “That’s

crazy, how can I help?” That’s what we want to make sure that you

understand. Everyone here around you – same place. All Newcomers.

You’re not the only one.

The language is acronyms. We talk in crazy language: gNSO, generic

Name Supporting Organizations, the GAC, which sounds like if

something stuck in your throat, which is the Government Advisory

Committee. We have the Internet Service Providers, ISP. We have our


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gTLDs, we have NTAG, it goes on and on. There is an software

application called Quizlet. We’ll talk about it a couple of times. I’ll give

you the link here. We call it the acronym buster. You can go into Quizlet

and it has all the glossary of ICANN vocabulary and it translates into six

different languages as well. We want to make sure you understand

what we’re saying in any language.

Closed doors. Really important that you understand this. The doors are

closed because people like me are talking loudly and they want to close

me in. Open every door. When you look on the schedule you may see

“closed” underneath perhaps one of the GAC meetings. That’s to close

them in, not to close you out. Very important that you feel that way.

Every once in a while the communities have to just hunker down. They

need to engage amongst themselves, discuss policies, discuss papers

they’re making for the Board or they’re going to present to another

community group. They need to close themselves in. That is not meant

to close you out. Most of our sessions are open. The doors are only shut

until you pull them.

We are like high school here. As soon as you open that door you're

going to have 50 faces turn around and look at you like you’re the new

kid in class. Ignore it. I had to learn to ignore it in San Juan or I never

would have been in one session. We are a bit of a little community and

sometimes you have to break us apart. Open the door, come in, find a

seat. If there’s a head table, that’s for the folks who are presenting. If

something’s in a U‐shape, all bets are off. You can come up to the head

table, sit there. because you're a Newcomer, doesn’t mean you take a

back seat.


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You are a participant, you are a member of the ICANN community the

minute that you register. Wherever you’d like to sit and have your voice

heard, do so. When you come up to a mic, just a word of advice.

Probably talk more slowly than I am right now. If I do that during the

day give me a sign and I’ll slow down. Talk slowly. English is not

everyone’s first language. We have interpreters and our scribes who are

trying desperately to get on record for the transcript your name, your

community’s name, and most importantly what you’re trying to express.

If you’re speaking quickly or you do not say your name, we don’t have

that for the record, and everything that we do here is for the record, for

a transcript that will be published and documented on the ICANN

schedule that you’re using now. You’ll click into it, you’ll find the

transcript two weeks’ later of the session that you were in. Please

respect our interpreters and our scribes. Speak slowly and say your first

and last name, for the record. As a beginner, a Newcomer, your voice is

no less important at the mic than someone who’s been there one year,

five years or ten.

You didn’t come here for vacation you came for a purpose – so be

confident and know that somebody asked that same question five years

ago when they were knew. You need to have it explained and it’s your

right to get to the mic and ask the question, so don’t be shy here. I’m

going to now ask my fellow staff member, Anne‐Rachel to come and join

us and take us back a bit. We’re going to go a little bit back into how this

whole thing called the Internet started. Doing the Newcomer for five

years now I’ve never had these slides in.


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The assumption is “everybody knows the Internet” and one of the things

we’re discovering is yes, everyone knows the Internet, but do you know

how young we are? Has it clicked in how young we are? How far we

have to go? Anne‐Rachel, I’m going to have you let everybody know a

little bit of your history with ICANN. Just take us through a little bit of

this.

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: Thank you Janice. Good morning everybody. My name is Anne‐Rachel

Inne. I come from Niger and I have been in and out of ICANN for the

past probably 15 years and around the Internet for slightly longer. My

involvement with ICANN and the Internet goes way back to the Cedar

Networks when I used to work for [airlines 00:29:02]. Those were the

first point‐to‐point communications, and then my path took me to quite

a few other places and I ended up doing something called at the time

“marketing on the Internet” and helping organizations put together their

back‐end, in corporate ICT, in their work and in their operations.

Then I did a lot of projects in practically all sectors, from agricultural to

health, that included ICTs around Africa and also Latin America and

Europe. Here I am at ICANN, and as Janice said we’re going to go back in

time a little bit and talk about what the Internet is. As some of you may

know, this Vint Cerf, he’s one of the co‐authors of the TCP IP protocol –

one of those acronyms – and basically it’s a protocol that helps

computers talk to each other, that give us the Internet. Vint will say

“this project” still.

This project started way back when DARPA, the Department of Defense

in this country, asked them to basically try to have something that could


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resist somewhat of a nuclear war. They came up with a packet‐

switching technology. In 1969 there were only four nodes that could

talk to each other, and they were all here. Then of course it quickly

mushroomed in the academic and scientific community, because this

was again “the project” and everybody wanted to be together, to talk to

each other, to have a medium that could help them transmit, “Okay, my

thesis is here, do you want to review the protocols I’m working on?” and

all of that.

So as you can see, a lot of nodes came to be and most of them, a lot of

them were still very much academic, scientific, and all of that. Then in

1971 they started having email, electronic mail. Then we had in 1974

the transmission protocols that were designed. In 1989 at CERN in

Switzerland, Tim Berners‐Lee invented the www that everyone believes

is the Internet, but actually is an application on the Internet. Then in

1993 we had the Mosiac browser released. Part of my own history is

that I went to the University of Illinois in Urbana‐Champaign, that is the

birthplace of Mosaic and Netscape.

It was a great place to meet people who had been part of this process

and who could make you even more energized in wanting to be part of

it. Then it started mushrooming. It went all over the place [overtalk

00:33:30] so 1993, 1994, 1995 we still had a lot of – this was the time

when there was actually one person that was behind this whole thing.

That was Jon Postel. He was at the University of Southern California and

ICANN, for the longest time, until two years ago, was in offices that were

at the University of Southern California. When I started working, part of

our offices, one of them was still Jon Postel’s office.


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As part of the history we inherited also one of the servers that he was

managing, and that’s the L. Part of one of the things you may want to

look at is the root servers. There’s 13 of them, and again this goes back

to… You may want to ask some of the folks that will be more technical

when they come here. They can tell you why we only have 13 root

servers on IPv4. It was a very precise technical thing more than anything

else – UDP packets – that when packets were distributed on the

network, they could not go more than 512k. Dividing that we could only

have 13 roots around the whole technical thing. Maybe some of you

here could actually explain that even better, if you're technical.

Anyway, we ended up with nine root servers here, and then three that

were distributed again out there in Japan, in Amsterdam and in London.

One in Japan, one in Amsterdam, one in London. Most of these, just like

the country code top‐level domains, were given by Jon to people who

were supposed to represent their communities and who could basically

hook up countries, hook up universities, because these were the people

who mostly at the time were connected in various countries to the

Internet. The mushrooming that you see is of course has gotten even

worse right now – worse in terms of the number of servers that we

have around the world.

It really happened pretty fast, which is one of the reasons why today we

have a whole life sitting on the Internet and it’s somewhat unsecured

because the medium was not supposed to be carrying all the things that

we’re doing on it today. At the time, Jon wanted his friends to be

connected so they could share things. Okay, theses are nothing

confidential. Sharing a protocol that I’m working with, with my scientific


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friends is not something confidential, so there was no reason to secure

anything.

So in 1995 Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. If you remember we

had Mosaic Netscape, so IE went [to be 00:37:04]. In 1996 we had the

first free email that people could use, that also helped the Internet grow

even more, because once people started having access to personalized

emails and could go up to distributing information about themselves,

about things they were doing, everybody started migrating all the stuff

they were doing, and I don’t think we thought twice about it.

Hotmail was launched in 1996. Google was founded in 1998. In 1998

ICANN was also created, because all that time, Jon was the person who

was behind all the operations of the Internet. What’s called the domain

name system, that incudes the names, the protocols and parameters,

and the IP addresses. These are the three things that IANA actually does

in terms of the functions that we have right now. ICANN was created in

1998, but why? Anybody know why?

At some point the whole thing, given that in 1995 we had IE and then

people started using email and then Google came to be, if you

remember, 1969 this whole thing had started because the Department

of Defense wanted a medium that they could use for themselves. By the

time we got to 1995, 1996, we also had an organization at the time

called Network Solutions that had started operating .com, .org and .net,

so even more people were having domain names and all of that, so the

Internet basically had slowly migrated from military to

academic/scientific, and now it was becoming everybody’s tool.


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The Clinton administration started talks at the time that went around

the world and that came to the Green Book and then the White Book,

and then we had ICANN that was created in 1998. The purpose of that

creation was to have an organization that could, given what we were

having with the Hotmails, the .coms, .orgs and others, that could

privatize basically the Internet. The governments met at one of the first

meetings of ICANN and said, “Yes, it’s all good and nice. We like it.

We’ll be there, but in an advisory capacity,” which is why today you have

what we all the Governmental Advisory Committee inside ICANN,

alongside the other constituencies.

When we started it was just the DNSO – Domain Name Supporting

Organization. That then became the country code Name Supporting

Organization, because after the talks and internationally we had issues

where countries were not happy for some of them, around 2000. Since

1998 when ICANN was being created we had discussions around the

world with ITU and others who were saying, “We’re the natural home of

this thing.” The final result was still privatization of ICANN. ITU, as part

of one of the technical members of what we used to have then, which

was called the Technical Liaison Group, with the IETF and others, they

were still part of the organization.

Really though, the purpose was to make sure that this thing is privatized

and became something that was for the benefit of the community.

That’s one of the reasons why today we have the multistakeholder

model. In the DNSO, when we started we had business, civil society, the

users, and then governments were in an advisory capacity. We had the

country code top‐level domains in there, and everybody would come


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together and discuss some of the policy issues that you’ll see this week,

for example. Even back then.

So this is part of the story. The Internet has become even more

commercial, from Wikipedia to as Janice said the social media today. You

put everything on the Internet. Our whole life is on it, which is also one

of the reasons why we have frictions everywhere. When you go and say

to governments, “Your servers depend, even today, on organizations

that actually do not ask anybody for any money to function,” they go,

“What? So my whole economy is residing on the Internet and you're

telling me some volunteer is running this back thing that’s making it

work?” We say, “Yes, it’s been working and it’s still working and they’ve

said they’ll continue to do that.”

“But who pays them?” “They pay themselves.” “Do you as ICANN pay

them?” “No, we don’t pay them. We only manage the one that we

have, which is the L, and we pay for its maintenance.” That includes

anything from renewing all the equipment to making sure it’s

functioning properly to making sure that it’s secured properly. These

are all of the frictions that we’re having on the Internet today. This is

because of all these applications that have come to be on the top layer

of the Internet, we have put our own life. The medium has gone way

quickly, more quickly than our physical world can deal with some of the

issues that are behind.

Today we have issues of security, we have issues of privacy, depending

on where you are. We have issues of intellectual property rights, we

have issues of country code new top‐level domains, new generic top‐

level domains, but also new countries that are coming on the Internet.


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Does anybody know here how Jon put countries in the Internet at the

beginning? When I hear people say, “The Internet is a no‐man’s land,” I

always say, “It’s really not.”

From the beginning, Jon may have been the only person who was

dealing with the Internet, but one of the best, smarter things that he did

was to say, “I’m going to go and find a place where they all agree, ‘this is

what a country is, this is what an economy is’.” He went to the

international organization ISO, International Standards Organization.

There is a list called 3166‐1 that gives the two‐letter codes for any

country and independent territories that exist in the world. Those two‐

letter codes, just like the ones that are three letters that are used for

your passports, are also used for the postal system, for libraries, for

quite a lot of things in the real world.

Jon went, took that list and said, “I’m going to find if I have friends or

people who want to manage these codes so we can get everybody

connected in the world.” He took something that was very official, that

was actually agreed internationally, that everybody knows about and

agreed to. He didn’t go and just say, “France is going to be .fr.” That

was not his job. If you look into how the Internet works, it’s not really

that much of a no‐man’s land. We do have underlying duties and

regulations, even as users today. When you go Twitter, when you go to

Instagram and share something, as I say to my daughter, one of the

things that you should think about is if somebody else shares it, will you

be happy?

Or if it ends up in somebody’s hand who does something even more

with it by photoshopping it and doing something else with it, would you


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be happy? Things like that, that we think about in the real world, but

today are provoking frictions when we use the Internet, because we

don’t really think that we’re in a virtual world, and we think that some of

the rules that are in the physical world are going to follow us. It’s not

the rules that are lacking, but they’re not following as quickly as we’d

like. That’s why we’re having frictions on the Internet.

I hope I give you a little bit of a sense of where we come from. It’s not

no‐man’s land, for sure. It’s definitely something that’s really moved

very quickly in terms of the medium. Nowadays it’s supposed to be

something that’s privatized but for the benefit of all. I really want you to

keep that in mind. That’s one of the reasons why as multistakeholders

we all have a stake in this, definitely. Private sector has a stake. Civil

society has a stake. Governments, international organizations that do all

the multi‐lateral, bi‐lateral corporation agreements, today we are sitting

from Geneva to New York and others because we want people to

understand that ICANN cannot deal with IPRs – Intellectual Property

Rights.

There are mediums. There is an organization called WIPO, that we’ve

been working with actually from the beginning. That probably needs a

little bit more to know that that part is in their camp now, as we go.

There is another one called the World Trade Organization that has in fact

global understanding around what they call TRIPS, and dealings in

ecommerce in general.

Some of the issues that we’re dealing with in cyber‐criminality probably

should be taken over by them, because their members need to

understand that if you're coming online doing ebanking, doing ebusiness


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in general, you’ve got to protect yourselves. So on and so forth. I’ll stop

here. I’m going to be here all week. If you want to exchange more I’ll be

very happy to do that. Thank you.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: This is where we started to have some technical difficulties. This is one

of the best two and a half minutes that you’ll spend, watching Vint Cerf

give a little animated history of the Internet and where we are. It’s

trained to my brain, which when Anne‐Rachel starts to talk technical I

just glaze. Seven years I have to pitch myself and I go, “I’m glazing!” so if

you’re glazing with me it’s all cool. We’ve got places for everybody here.

It’s not all technical. This animation is excellent. It’s fun, it’s engaging.

This presentation is currently behind the Newcomer session. You click it

on the schedule. You will find the presentation. The link will be there

and you can go and take a look at that for right now. I think we have a

question here.

[ARSEN TUNGALI]: Thank you very much. I’m [Arsen Tungali 00:51:33] and I’m from the

DRC. I’m glad to be able to listen to Anne‐Rachel lively, because I’ve

been following her on social media, so I’m glad to be able to be in front

of her presenting. Thank you. It’s been a great presentation. My

question is for you, Anne‐Rachel. You’ve been following the birth, let’s

say, the success of the Internet. I’d like to know at this point what you

think of the future of the Internet – of all the challenges that you’ve

mentioned, seeing how it’s grown. What can you say about the future,

in all aspects, as much as you can? Thank you.


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ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: I think I’d be really presumptuous if I try to say what the Internet can

look like, because we’ve come a long way. When you look at what the

Internet is today, it’s already completely different from when I started.

It’s a lot of applications today. We’re going to something called the

Internet of things. Your fridge is going to be talking to your car, that’s

going to be talking to your… Vint says, “I’ll be able to finally find one of

my socks that disappear all the time.” Seriously. With all of that in

there, with the applications that are coming, it’s really hard to gauge

where the technology is going.

There’s one thing that’s absolutely there that’s going to follow us. It’s

really, I would say, the regulation that now a lot of countries want to put

on the Internet, and for which we really have to be very careful in

dealing with. Why? Because again, fears around especially security,

privacy, are pushing governments to want to regulate a bit tightly and

wall off parts of the Internet into lands that other people cannot access.

Where you are right now you can basically access information from

everybody from everywhere. If we get to the point where a consortia of

organizations like the banking system say, “Because of all the issues that

we’re having around security we’re going to wall off ourselves and put

even more security around our networks,” it’s going to cost us, as users,

even more to be able to access them, because our own networks have

to be really secure and really tight before we can access them.

So there will be cost to everybody and we won’t be able to access each

other as we do today that easily. This is one of the things that I think as

the technology evolves and as we get even more things on the Internet,


Page 19 of 139

we really have to all think together and be careful in terms of the rules

and regulations that we put on the medium, so that we don’t end up

balkanizing it, basically.

PIERRE [DONVOLUE]: This is Pierre [Donvolue] from Benin, West Africa. Just two questions.

The first one is that my country, Benin, has been connected to the

Internet in 1995 and I do remember that at that time Netscape was the

most popular navigator people used. How is it that Netscape have been

capsized down by Internet Explorer? The second question is that at the

beginning of the history of the Internet, the Internet was a secure place,

so you could do business on the Internet very freely.

But now I notice that the Internet is becoming more and more a place of

insecurity. You never know who can hide himself behind the email you

receive. On Facebook you are not even sure if the picture you see is the

picture of your brother. You can never be sure that you’re talking to

him. Is it that the future of the Internet will be dangerous, or what do

you think about that?

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: Thanks very much Pierre. I’m not alone here. I have colleagues. Nigel

works with me in Geneva and we take care of the government but also

the international intergovernmental organizations, as I told you, WIPO,

WTO and the others. I also have Chris here, Chris Mondini. He’s taking

care of helping us also get business and even more involved in what

ICANN is doing. I’ll let Chris address Pierre’s questions, if you don’t

mind, Pierre.


Page 20 of 139

CHRIS MONDINI: Thank you Anne‐Rachel. Thanks Pierre for the question. It’s great to see

you here from Benin. The first question you asked I think, as Anne‐

Rachel said, I work with the ICANN GSE Team and I wear two hats. One

of my hats is an effort to do outreach with businesses – businesses of all

sizes, from all parts of the world, and to help them understand where

their interests are at stake in the work of ICANN, and therefore to

participate. Because as you’re all learning now, many businesses have

not learnt yet how open and participatory this environment is, and that

they can in fact shape the future of the DNS and aspects of the Internet.

I think your first question really describes the kind of disruption and

opportunity that the network of networks that is the Internet provides.

What you described was a very good example of how one existing,

incumbent business was completely defeated by another new business.

If you see some of the businesses for example that are based on

hundreds of millions of users, like social media networks, and how

rapidly that they can expand, they can then actually displace something

that existed before. One of the things I’ve been following lately is how

Wii Chat and some of the social media micro‐blogging platforms that

come from China are competing with Twitter, which is very well known,

in places like Latin America.

You’ll see that maybe some of these big companies that we put on the

slide here, that we all think of as the big Internet companies in five or

ten years, they’ll either be smaller or joined by others. That’s one of the

business benefits of the Internet, for new businesses. Even if you have

good connectivity you can start with your idea in West Africa or any part


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of the world and really spread that idea very quickly. But if you’re an

incumbent or if you’re an industry that existed before the Internet,

sometimes you feel like it’s very disruptive to you.

On your second question about this feeling of security or insecurity, I

hear very often my colleagues talk about other tools. I think Anne‐

Rachel explained very nicely how the Internet really began as a project

among academics, most of whom knew each other and most of whom

had their addresses written on a notebook and were of the same

community. Then it became more commercialized, and then it became

really global. All of us as individuals are interacting with businesses and

government services and academics and so forth.

With any tool, if you think of the introduction of the telephone, it wasn’t

long after the introduction of the telephone that people invented ways

to call you up and try to fool you over the telephone in some way.

Credit cards are very big in a lot of countries, and it was within days of

the first credit cards being introduced that people thought of ways to

commit fraud. Really, if you think of the Internet as another tool, it’s a

very powerful tool, but as we got very close to three billion people using

it, some of those people are using it in ways that are criminal or may

harm other people.

So it’s important not to blame the Internet and not to run for solutions

that diminish the connectivity of the Internet, but really as we were

saying, look towards where solutions exist. Look for where

organizations are looking at things like crime and fraud and so forth, and

see how we can apply some of those existing solution, because human


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behavior that you describe existed before the Internet allowed us all to

have so many people participate.

[VICTORIA ELOBAKERMA]: My name is [Victoria Elobakerma 01:02:06] from Nigeria. I found a

studio where, going through the [genesis] of the Internet, and getting to

the point where the purpose was setting up ICANN, we’re talking about

privatization. My worry there is why should we be talking about

privatization if truly [genesis 01:02:28] actually set up by individuals.

How come we’re now talking about privatization? That’s if I got you

right.

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: What happened was simply that when the medium was just something

that was with the Department of Defense and others, it was a project, it

was a tool, just like any other project that was sitting inside an

administration – this one being the US one. One of the ways, as you’ve

seen, that the Internet evolved, was really that people went ahead and

just launched into .com. Everybody wanted their website under.com,

.org, .net. A lot of what we were seeing around 1995‐1998 was really

just business coming on the Internet – the banking system, individuals

building their own commercial websites and all of that – were coming on

the Internet.

When talks happened, in Europe, in America, in Asia, about what do we

do with this, how do we put it together, basically, they just looked at

what was happening. It was about registries, registrars being the main

construct of this new thing, and basically this is where the money was


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coming from. Given that at that time we didn’t really have the threats

that we have today in terms of seeing how much to regulate, they said,

“Okay, business should be able to carry this forward, but with everyone

else involved.”

This is why they said privatization, but again this is one of the things that

does not exist in a lot of legal systems, that ICANN is a not‐for‐profit

corporation. It’s basically for public benefit, but the way it functions, to

be able to carry the contracts with .com, new gTLDs and others, we have

to have the private sector basis. That’s really where the sense of private

came from.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I have three more questions that we’re going to take and then I’d like to

just go through the Internet governance and the multistakeholder model

and then come back to questions again.

[IGO]: Thank you. [Igo Mugratonian 01:05:33] from Armenia. One of the

futures of the ICANN for which it is criticized is that ICANN is a US

organization operating under United States law. We can imagine a

hypothetical situation where a Congress of the US adopts a law with

sanctions to exclude a country from the [NS 01:06:08] system, though it

is very hard to believe, but we can imagine such a situation is possible.

That’s why some of the critics are talking about transferring some

government rights from ICANN to ITU. What can you respond with to

such critics? Thank you.


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NIGEL HICKSON: Good morning. That’s… Yes, I like the easy questions. Yes. It’s always

good talking about the US when you're in Los Angeles. I’m Nigel

Hickson. I know some of you. I don’t know what I am. I’m the Vice

President of International Governmental Organizations. Basically I work

in Geneva with Anne‐Rachel and it’s a pleasure to work with her in

Geneva. We work in terms of engagement with the government

missions in Geneva, as Anne‐Rachel has mentioned. I work with IGOs in

particular, so I work with the ITU and I work with the United Nations in

particular, in Geneva and elsewhere, and I work with WIPO and WTO

and a whole lot of other international bodies.

Your question sir, do you know, other people ask that as well, and it’s a

very relevant question. I think rather than going into the detail of the

history of the contract with the US – and Anne‐Rachel has talked a bit

about how the relationship with the US grew up in terms of the Internet

– there’s going to be other sessions this week of course on the IANA

transition, on the NTIA transition of the stewardship of the IANA

function. We’re going to have discussion on that, which of course will

make ICANN a more global representative body.

On your specific point, what you say to organizations is, “Yes, of course

there is a link with the United States. The link with the US is there

because of very good reason.” The US took the bold step of privatizing

the Internet and then put some safeguards in place. One of those

safeguards was the ability that when the root of the Internet is modified,

when a new country comes into the Internet or when we introduce a

new gTLD, then there are checks and balances that are carried out by

the US Government, and that’s the IANA function that’s being

transitioned to the global multistakeholder community.


Page 25 of 139

The US have never abused that system and as you said, sir, one could

imagine a situation but one hasn’t had that situation and there’s been

lots of provocation over the last ten years in terms of global conflicts,

etcetera, when you thought the US would perhaps abuse that situation,

or critics of the US thought they might, but they never did. We’ve had a

situation where the IANA function has been responsive to the needs of

individual countries. I know there’s other issues in terms of US sanctions

policy and how that affects individuals in some countries, and that’s

something else that we can discuss.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I was just going to jump in because I think we’re getting a theme that

we’re just right ready to talk about going here, so if you don’t mind,

Valentina and Sarah have the individuals, we had three, I didn’t forget

you there, that have the questions. I’d like you to please just note your

question down. The first ones we’re coming back to, because I think

some of the questions are going to be about what we’re talking about.

I’m hearing a theme about the Internet ecosystem and where does

ICANN fit into that. Let’s go into that. I’m going to have Chris just talk

about that and let’s see if I’m right or wrong on the questions, as they

come right back after.

CHRIS MONDINI: Thanks very much. I wonder, could I use one of the mobile mics? Thank

you very much. If anyone else is feeling cold, we’ve sent a note saying

we’re feeling cold in Beverly Hills. I hope everybody is… Look at Janice

with her hot beverage and her scarf. As I mentioned, my name is Chris

Mondini. I wear two hats. I do business engagement at ICANN and I do


Page 26 of 139

North American engagement with all the stakeholder groups in ICANN.

Before I proceed I just want to introduce two people who are here and

totally are not expecting me to introduce them.

The first is this is Ricardo [Rufulu 01:11:28]. Please stand Ricardo. He’s

on the Business Engagement Team, so for those of you who are business

stakeholders, please get to know him, follow him around, ask him your

questions. He’s here to help you out. With Ricardo is Joe Catapano.

He’s based in the Washington office with me and he’s the stakeholder

specialist coordinator manager for North America and he’s based in the

Washington office as well.

You might wonder… We have a very international group and you might

wonder why the North American gets to have the microphone, and it’s

because we’re in Los Angeles. The ICANN Meetings rotate through the

different regions and so I get to have the pleasure of welcoming you. I

was looking at the diversity of the people who are here attending; not

just from a geographic point of view but also the different stakeholder

categories, the different stages people are at at their careers, and it

actually reminded me of something.

Janice, when we were preparing, she said, “Remember, some of the

people in the room are deep specialists in their area,” so even though

it’s a Newcomer session, there are very few of you for whom all of this is

new. That means A) we count on you to jump pin and participate and

raise your hand if you want to help us to explain an aspect that you

might work in, but also I think it’s a nice illustration of the

multistakeholder ethos at ICANN.


Page 27 of 139

I compare it a little bit to I used to run triathlons. I don’t know if

anyone’s ever run a triathlon; one of these events where you have to

run, bike and swim? The thing that struck me about triathlons is that

people that participate in them are generally pretty nice. I decided that

the reason that they’re pretty nice is that nobody is really good in all

three things. If you’re just doing one thing you’re always going to get the

best people and they’ll get a big ego, right? But in a triathlon everybody

has their thing that they’re really good at and maybe the thing that

they’re less good at.

I’ve been at ICANN for three years now, on the staff. I continually learn

from the people that I interact with in the community, and from the

staff. Again, I find that this spirit of learning and the spirit of bringing

different perspectives to solve problems and to benefit the future

Internet is really a very stimulating experience for me. That’s my little

spiel about multistakeholderism at ICANN. Janice, you asked about the

Internet ecosystem and some of the questions here did lead to the

question of “what is the role of governments?” or “who decided this?”

and “who made this decision?”

I think at the Newcomers’ Booth, but also if you choose your favorite

search engine and you look for “who runs the Internet?” an image like

this will appear. It’s also on the Wikipedia page for Internet governance.

It’s a little bit of a funny story. This picture, people criticize it as not a

very good picture, but in fact no picture existed three years ago. We

gathered stakeholders to put it together. I’ve heard stories of world

leaders, of presidents, pounding the desk and saying, “This Internet, how

did it get into my country? Who runs this Internet? Get me the Internet

on the phone!”


Page 28 of 139

Then somebody on their staff runs and they look around and they bring

this in and say, “Here you are sir, here’s the Internet.” If you look at this,

what is this? This is really a list. It’s like an alphabet soup, as we say, of

acronyms and organizations, but it really gets to the point, which is that

ICANN is just one. There are lists down both sides of this infographic of

organizations, and ICANN is just one of them. ICANN has a very specific

remit with relation to the names, the domain names, the Internet

protocol addresses, and the protocols and parameters that allow the

Internet to be interoperable.

Even those protocols and parameters they came from another

organization, which is another acronym, which is the IETF – the Internet

Engineering Task Force, which is down here. There’s also the Internet

Architecture Board, there’s the Internet Research Task Force. Now,

what they all have in common is that they are for the most part radically

open and accessible. If you’re an engineer or if you're a deep technical

expert, they need you at the IETF because again, it’s very similar to this

but much more techy. Everybody is welcome. Everybody participates.

They are also, as it says on the slide, highly independent.

It’s not any one organization. They depend on each other to keep the

Internet scalable, global and interoperable. If you’re an Internet

engineer, what that speaks to is this principle of resilience. There’s not

one organization or one central place that all of these decisions are

made, because in fact that would create a risk. That would create a risk

that something could go wrong, there could be a disaster, there could be

a political pressure on that one place, that one organization.


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The fact that we’re part of an ecosystem, that ICANN sits in an

ecosystem of many organizations and that those organizations are

resilient is very important. We had a mention of the International

Standards Organization. I know many of you are from the Internet

Society Chapters in your countries, and they are also part of this

ecosystem. The governments and the intergovernmental organizations

sometimes raise an eyebrow that they’re down here in the corner, listed

really alongside everybody else as a stakeholder.

I know that sometimes our CEO likes to talk about the multi‐equal

stakeholder model. In a lot of parts of the world the governments or

government officials aren’t used to being just another stakeholder like

everybody else. This is another thing that’s really quite unique to

Internet culture, the way the Internet’s developed. It’s a very non‐

hierarchical ecosystem. Ecosystem is the key word.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: What I’m going to ask you to do Chris, if you would hand the

microphone to this wonderful young lady here in the front? Just like

Ricardo she’s going to kill me right now for doing this to her. As a move

from the understanding that Christopher is sharing with us about ICANN

being one piece of the Internet ecosystem, and so many other

components, there’s crossover. You don’t have to stay in one. Just like

here in ICANN when we talk a little later about the multistakeholder,

“Oh I’m a lawyer so I have to be here,” or, “I’m only here because I

belong in this one group, I can’t possibly go to this other group and listen

to what they’re saying,” just like that, ICANN works with these other

entities.


Page 30 of 139

[Murella 01:19:13] is one of the Fellowship Alumni. She’s been through

the Fellowship Program. She’s been a Newcomer like you and to the

ICANN sphere, but she was well versed, prior to coming into the ICANN

sphere, in Internet governance and working outside of the ICANN model.

She’s fresh off the IGF in Istanbul. I’ll ask her just to talk about A) being

new into this when she came in from the bigger world, and why she

even wanted to come in and look at ICANN as part of it, but B) how

these worlds meet.

[MURELLA]: I’ll stand a little bit because I’m cold too. This is cold this room, in this

place. It’s amazing. Hi everybody. Good morning. My name is [Murella

Marcielle]. I’m a researcher and coordinator of the Centre of Research

in Brazil, the Centre for Technology and Society, that is part of the

[unclear 01:10:06] Foundation. Just as Janice said, I began participating

in ICANN one year ago. I’m a Member of the Non‐Commercial Users

Constituency, that you will hear about on Tuesday morning.

Then I became part of the NCSG – the Non‐Commercial Stakeholder

Group Policy Committee, which gave me the opportunity to see how

policy has developed in ICANN. I encourage you to do so, because when

policy is developed, it’s the moment in which actors and interests class

and you understand how the organization operates. So it’s a very rich

process. After being part of the Policy Committee I’ve recently been

elected for the gNSO Council, starting now, in LA, for one year. I’m

looking forward to it. I’m sure it will be a very interesting experience.

What I want to say about the Fellowship Program is that this is a very

distinct program. It’s different from what you’ll find elsewhere. Here


Page 31 of 139

you’ll find the support to understand, to learn and to be engaged in

ICANN if you want to. You will find the human resources, because

people are very open to listening and answering questions. You’ll find

them amazing. When you go to the receptions and you find leadership

and you approach them and ask questions – tell them you're a Fellow.

They’re going to talk to you and answer your questions. People are very

open.

You’ll find the material here. You’ll find the organizational support. You

can go to the Booth, you can talk to people, you can talk to alumni.

There’s a lot going on around you that will make you feel welcome and

to be really engaged. This is really different from other programs I’ve

been part of. Without any names, one time I was a Fellow in a program

and what they wanted us to do was to carry boxes around for them.

This won’t happen here – thank God – so you're in a very good position

to learn and to be engaged, if you want to.

One thing that I’d tell you to do, and it’s very important, is that you

study. Study what’s going on here, even before the meeting. I know

that you're coming up and you’ll leave this meeting with a lot on your

lap, a lot of topics that you want to follow, but I believe that you will

continue to be engaged in a Fellowship Program. Maybe you’ll apply

next meeting or some other time. When you apply again it’s very

important that you get this bunch of topics that you will come out with

here, and that you shift through them and understand what your main

interests are.

Then come here with a very clear understanding or at least with a

narrowed‐down set of issues that you want to learn more about and be


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engaged about. Read the documents beforehand. One very good thing

about ICANN is that everything is documented, so you will find

documents, transcripts, recordings, from every session. The difficulty is

how to digest so much information, but the information is around, so it’s

very important that as soon as possible you narrow down your interests

here.

Myself, my own experience, how I became involved in ICANN was

because I started to be involved in Internet governance in other spaces,

mostly in the United Nations in 2007. I had been to most of the IGFs,

which is a space to discuss policy issues related to the Internet. It’s a

non‐decision making forum, but it’s a very important forum in which all

stakeholders align their understanding about policy issues, come out

with best practices, come back home with issues that they want to

implement. I’ve been following this.

I’ve been following the International Telecommunication Union. We’ll

have the next very important conference coming up now in Busan – the

plenipotentiary conference of the ITU. I’ve been following the

Commission on Science and Technology for Development, which is part

of the UN system as well. I tell you – some years ago there were people

that were part of ICANN and only understood about ICANN. if you want

to remain here in ICANN there are so many topics, there are so many

issues, that this is a world in itself. I don’t think we can afford to do that

anymore.

We are in a transitional moment for Internet governance. There are so

many important processes going on right now, like next year we’ll have

the review of the World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS.


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You’ll probably hear this word some times during this week. The WSIS

was a key moment in 2003 and 2005 in which governments began to be

more closely involved and started discussing many issues related to the

Internet under the UN realm. Now we have several UN organizations

that have a small stake, a small role, in Internet governance forming this

whole ecosystem that they were talking about.

The WSIS happened ten years ago. The review is coming up next year,

and there are very important issues being discussed such as how is this

ecosystem going to evolve? We now have a pretty distributed model,

which is a good thing, it’s a good model. It brought us to where we are,

in terms of Internet development. But how do we govern it from now

on? We feel that there are actors that it’s hard to participate. We have

many different forums.

Some actors advocate that we should have more coordination; maybe a

Clearinghouse that would make it easier for actors to understand where

they should go when they have a particular problem related to the

Internet. There are some proposals to create an Internet body under

the UN and not a distributed model anymore. There are many political

struggles all across the spectrum, and ICANN is involved in these

discussions as well. As you may know, ICANN has been one of the

promoters of the Net Mundial, the global conference on the future of

Internet governance that happened in Brazil in the beginning of this

year.

This was a very important conference, a historical conference, because

for the first time a group of multistakeholder actors came to a very

concrete outcome from their discussions, from bottom‐up discussions,


Page 34 of 139

which was a multistakeholder statement. Net Mundial produced a

multistakeholder statement. This was something that had never

happened before. Many people believe that we could not deliberate

about something in a multistakeholder environment because we are so

diverse and different, but we did it. We made it.

Some of the important things that came out in this statement is one, the

Internet should be managed on the public good, as people have

commented here before, and even though we have this ecosystem

composed of public and private actors, it’s very important that we all

work together, having the public good as aim. Two, the distributed

model for Internet governance has been endorsed by many actors, and

this discussion will come up again next year during the WSIS, but we

now have a very legitimate document that came out of Net Mundial that

endorses this distributed model.

ICANN is so involved in the broader ecosystem and Internet governance

discussions, it’s been pushing for these discussions so much that it’s

impossible today to participate in ICANN and have a full understanding

of what the issues are, what’s going on here, what the geopolitical

disputes and struggles are, without having this broader knowledge

about Internet governance. How to do that? We have so much related

to ICANN to grasp here. How do we get involved?

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I believe! I will go anywhere you take me, [Murella 01:27:53]. I think

you’ve converted an entire audience.


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[MURELLA MARCIELLE]: I believe that for a start there are three things that we can do. First of

all, there are very good and succinct publications that deal with Internet

governance in a very didactical way. We could start with them. One of

them is a book that I like very much and I work with my students, and

it’s called An Introduction to Internet Governance by Dr. Jovan Kurbalija.

It’s a very good book because you go through all the basics related to

the Internet governance ecosystem – all the topics, from economy to

jurisdiction, from Internet governance ecosystem and institutions and so

on. It’s a very good place to start.

If you want to dig into the geopolitical disputes and struggles then

there’s another book called The War For Internet Governance by Laura

DeNardis. It’s a very good one. If you like the political, heavier stuff, or

the technical stuff, because she has legal background but also technical

knowledge, which makes the book very interesting, it’s another

publication that I’d recommend to you to get this background

knowledge about Internet governance.

Other than that, there are lists of discussion. Lists of discussion are very

important. You don’t have to read every email that arrives in your

mailbox, but at least you understand what’s going on, what the topics

are, what people are talking about. If you get one topic that you are

interested in, read the thread. There are several very good lists related

to Internet governance. If you are civil society folk you can join [“best

bits” 01:29:34]. If you are more from a technical background you can

join the ISOC policy mailing list.

But look for mailing lists, seriously, they become like your news feed.

You select what you want to read, but you will always be up‐to‐date on


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what’s going on in terms of the broader Internet governance

discussions. For a start I think that this is it. Always talk to us. There are

many people here that are very keen to talk to you, and everybody’s

really open and that really struck me the first time I was here – how

everybody’s really willing to bring more people in. This is very

important. Be engaged in work here. This is how you're going to learn.

People are dying for new people to be engaged in Working Groups and

to write statements. So get one topic that you’re more interested in or

that you have some more knowledge on. If it’s intellectual property,

fine. There are Working Groups now looking at trademarks and

protection of IGOs, NGOs, etcetera. If you like human rights we have a

very good meeting coming up to discuss human right perspectives of

ICANN policies. It’s going to happen on Wednesday. Just keep looking

at the Twitter feed. It’s in [unclear 01:30:50]. We have just secured a

room for it. So go to the topic that you like, but be involved in real work.

That’s how you’re going to learn. Thank you.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Wow! Don’t go! I’m going to take one question just to [Murella], and

the other folks, I haven’t forgotten you have questions. I don’t want you

to think so, but let’s just grab this question directly to this discussion.

Now Nigel doesn’t have to speak at all, which he’s really happy about.

DAVID SOLOMONOFF: I’m David Solomonoff, President of the New York Internet Society. We

met earlier, Chris and Joe. I’ll try to ask a real hard question here,

because it’s the only one. ICANN and the current DNS system have been


Page 37 of 139

criticized as being overly centralized, hierarchical and fundamentally

insecure. In the early days of the Internet there were other alternate

root systems of domain names that don’t exist anymore. The question

is, why are you better and how do those other systems go away?

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: I guess we come back to what Chris said before. One system just

became a little bit more prominent than the others and was probably

easier to use in terms of not only [unclear 01:32:20] but its acceptance

with people. I think that’s one of the only reasons why it continued,

mushroomed. I think one of the advantages that this one root that we

have right now has had is to have Jon, who thought that he wanted

really everybody to be connected.

That took off, and quite a lot of countries and people connected and

basically got a sense of this is the one part they knew, and the others

didn’t really make it out there. I guess that’s one of the only reasons

why this one root mushroomed and is what it is today.

DAVID SOLOMONOFF: Sorry, just a real fast clarification. It’s my understanding that just before

Jon Postel died he did a test where he connected the other alternate

root systems to the main root in the test environment and they did work

without any problems. This is something I’ve heard. I don’t know.

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: Tests are tests and projects are projects. It’s like a laboratory I guess.

You hook up things, but some basically work and others don’t work as


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easily. I think in this process that’s simply what happened really. It had

nothing to do with the fact that somebody in the background – because

we have a lot of legends around the Internet – said, “These other roots

can’t work,” or anything, but it’s just a case of that there was one that

had a lot of people behind it, that had a lot of applications that were

being developed behind it, and that just grew to be what it is.

We have this in history when we go back to Minitel. I don’t know if you

know the system? If history had taken some other path, the Internet

could have been French. One of the guys who’s still talking about

alternate roots is Louis Pouzin. Louis is one of the first proponents of

the datagram that Vint and Bob – and they will say this themselves and

they have said it before – they took the datagram work that Louis was

doing at [unclear 01:35:30] in France and evolved it into the TCP IP

protocol. Why? Because Louis, Vint and others are scientists, and they

were actually sharing those types of information.

At the time, Louis in France was refused subsidies to work on evolving

the datagram system because France was gung‐ho on the Minitel and

they believed the Minitel was the technology that everybody was going

to espouse. This is how history goes.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you. [Murella] did an amazing job. I wanted to have the bridge

between the Internet ecosystem and the place of ICANN and our part in

Internet governance, and this bridge there that you can be in all worlds.

I’m going to pass over to Nigel Hickson to talk a little bit more about

Internet governance. Again, we’re trying to for you connect everything

here. It’s really important that everybody does understand that the


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Internet ecosystem is filled with entities that have a remit. ICANN has

one remit and other entities have others. Internet governance is how

we’re talking. Nigel, do you want to take it away?

NIGEL HICKSON: Yes. Thank you very much. It’s not very warm in here, is it? My job has

been made much easier my [Murella] who eloquently outlined some of

the challenges, some of the issues that we have. ICANN of course is just

part of this global Internet governance ecosystem. Internet governance

is a term that you will hear time and time again during this week, and

you’ve probably heard it many times before. In fact, probably it’s your

interest in Internet governance that’s brought you here today, as well as

other issues, as well as coming to LA.

Internet governance is a very interesting term and its definition goes

back to a process that [Murella] mentioned, which is the World Summit

on the Information Society. I’m going to go around a bit on some of

these points here because I think the context of this is quite important.

Let’s go back in history a bit. We have the creation of ICANN, as Anne‐

Rachel has outlined. A bold step by the US Government. Bill Clinton.

The White Paper. Ira Magaziner, the Internet Czar, who I actually met

when I was working for the UK Government back in the ‘90s. These are

bold moves.

The Internet was in its infancy. The US realized that it was going to

grow, it was going to become something increasingly important, and

that if you were going to manage the domain name, if you were going to

manage the technical infrastructure of the Internet, then it couldn’t be

just the University of Southern California doing it, you had to put it on a


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firmer basis. ICANN, as outlined, was created from this process. There

were always tensions, and those tensions were evident at the beginning

when ICANN was formed, and those tensions came to the fore very soon

after ICANN’s existence.

In 2003 the UN, at the behest of the International Telecommunications

Union, hosted the WSIS. The WSIS wasn’t all about Internet governance,

but it was primarily about the Internet, the evolution of the Internet

would be, how important the Internet would be, how important the

Internet already was in some countries but not in other countries, how

developing countries could access the Internet, the skills gap, education,

multilingualism, human rights, media pluralism – these issues were

discussed in 2003 at the WSIS and then again in 2005.

The first one was in Geneva, the second in Tunisia. From the 2005 WSIS

we get the Tunis Agenda, and some of you, students of Internet

governance, will have read the Tunis Agenda. The Tunis Agenda is a bit

like a sort of bible on Internet governance to a large extent. It sets out

broader themes of Internet governance and it gives us this definition of

Internet governance, which is all encompassing, all encompassing. We

can include most things under the governance of the Internet – privacy,

cyber security, child protection, taxation on the Internet, human rights

on the Internet – all these issues can be covered under the broad theme

of Internet governance.

Sometimes it’s better – and this isn’t my language at all – to consider

Internet governance in two areas – the technical aspects of Internet

governance, the governance of the Internet, what we do, what the

regional Internet registries have done, as Chris outlined earlier. The


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technical nuts and bolts of the Internet, the management of the DNS,

the development of Internet protocols through the IETF, the distribution

of IP addresses by the regional Internet registries. That’s, if you like,

Internet governance of the Internet.

Then we have governance on the Internet. The governance that you

need because of the Internet, and really the governance on the Internet

tracks a whole range of issues that were apparent before we had the

Internet – privacy, security, child protection, fraud, all those issues – but

the Internet has brought many of those issues to the forefront. I think

sometimes it’s useful to look at it in those two ways, and then you get a

better understanding of how wide this equation is.

The WSIS process defined the Internet governance. It set up the

Internet Governance Forum, which we can mention in a minute, and

really endorsed what ICANN was doing in terms of the technical

management of the Internet and the multistakeholder approach. The

WSIS. The WSIS process, while we’re on the WSIS process, as was

mentioned again by [Murella], there’s a review. When governments get

together – and governments were the backbone of the WSIS. Any

governments, when you write a treaty and when you write the Tunis

Agenda, you always have to say, “It’s going to be reviewed.”

This is always something we did. I spent nearly 30 years in the British

Government. Whenever you had a problem you always said, “Well, we’ll

agree it for now and we’ll review it in a few years’ time.” It was one way

to get agreement on things. The Tunis Agenda, I think it was very good

of governments to get away by saying they were going to review it in

2015 – so a ten‐year window. So the review of the WSIS Agenda is


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forthcoming and it is important, but we have to just clarify what this

review is. The review is not of the Tunis Agenda itself.

It’s of the effectiveness of the WSIS outcomes. That’s what the language

is and that’s what this UN meeting in New York next year will look at.

It’s the effectiveness. It’s how we’ve come as a society. How we’ve

done since 2003 and 2005. We set out these action lines in the WSIS

process. We said there should be greater accessibility. We said there

should be broadband for all. We said there should be multilingualism.

We said that governments should have a better input into the public

policy process. Has this happened? Do governments feel better

involved in Internet governance? Is there more broadband? Is there

more multilingualism?

These are the issues that are being looked at in this WSIS meeting. The

process is already underway. In 2013 UNESCO held a major conference

on the WSIS review, looking at their responsibilities, UNESCO’s

responsibilities, our skills, education, multilingualism, human rights. The

ITU just this year hosted a major Summit on the WSIS Agenda looking at

a whole range of action lines, right across the piece. The final piece in

the jigsaw, as was mentioned, is New York next year when the UN

General Assembly will look at the whole WSIS process.

This is important and this is something to track, because it affects us all.

It affects this overall discussion that is always taking place between the

rights of governments to be involved in Internet governance issues,

particularly governance of the Internet, and the rights of the

multistakeholder community to take this agenda forward. We in ICANN

are in a position of privilege. There can only be one – and you discussed


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in terms of alternative roots or whatever – but fundamentally the DNS is

unique. It doesn’t have to be ICANN that manages the DNS.

We’d like to think, and the community here will tell you that over the

years since ICANN has been formed, the ICANN community has gained

this expertize, this knowledge, this way of dealing with Internet

governance issues, in developing international domain names, in

developing new gTLD programs and the right DNSSEC and security

protocols, and the whole range of policies that have made it better for

users, that have made accessibility better, that have helped us as a

community reach some of these WSIS goals. But at the end of the day

we stand as ICANN before the jury. Have we done enough? Are we

being successful? Is there someone else that can step into your shoes?

You have to have humility in this game.

If we’re all fundamentally here for the good of society and because we

have a belief in the openness, in singularity of the Internet, in the ability

for the Internet to reach communities that it doesn’t reach for social

development, for political development, for economical development,

for the development of human rights – we have this belief in what the

Internet can do. It doesn’t matter ultimately who does it. It matters

how effectively it is done. That’s why many of us believe that the

multistakeholder process, the infusion of all voices into this process,

going forward, is the best way forward. That’s the test for everyone to

turn.

I don’t really get very passionate about this at all myself actually! I was a

civil servant, you know? Working for the government you’re not

allowed to be interested in anything. Right, so the ITU, just to clarify –


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and I won’t waffle on forever – the International Telecommunications

Union – a very important body. It has it’s 150th Anniversary next year.

I’m in Geneva so I’m looking forward to a bloody good party next year.

If you can’t have a good party when you're 150 years old… We’ll see.

The ITU has been in existence for a long time. It’s been fundamental in

the early years for setting telecommunication standards.

It was one of the liberators of the telecommunication system, the ITU,

introducing cross‐connection protocols, introducing cost accounting that

went across borders, allowing operators to have international

connectivity. It’s done an awful lot. It has a major standard settings

agenda in the technical area. It does frequency allocation, manages the

international spectrum for radio and for telecommunication. The ITU

plays a fundamental role in the development of the Internet. The

Broadband Commission that Hama Dun Toure, the Secretary General

heads up, again has been very influential in terms of broadband

development across a swathe of the developing world.

Don’t ever let it be said that somehow ICANN thinks that the ITU doesn’t

have a role in this area. The ITU does have a role. What we say is that

we and the other members of the technical community also have a role.

We’re all in this together, as I said. We have the same fundamental

objectives of what we want to do with the Internet. Hear Hama Dun

Toure speak. He’s an inspiring speaker. He’s an eloquent speaker.

Some people say he’s a politician, but he’s passionate in what he

believes in. He fundamentally believes that the developing world have

as much right to the Internet as anyone else. Everyone has a right to be

able to use the Internet for the purposes they want to use it for.


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We work with the ITU across a number of fronts. We’re involved in the

plenipotentiary discussions that are taking place next week in Busan.

Every four years the ITU has a major conference where they review their

work‐plan, their strategic objectives, and where we adopt a number of

resolutions. ICANN will be there working alongside ISOC. The Internet

Society, as you know, are fundamental in defining a lot of this work. We

work under the Internet Society at ITU to ensure that our knowledge

and expertise is also brought to the table.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Nigel, this is your conscience speaking. We have 15 minutes left.

NIGEL HICKSON: Yes. Very quickly then, we have the global dimension to the work that

ICANN does, fitting into this international governmental agenda. As we

said, the global dimension is working at the IGF. It’s working with the

ITU in the WSIS Agenda, working at the OECD and UNESCO. Involvement

of ICANN in terms of the international discussions, because we’re part of

the system. We work with ISOC and the RIRs. We work alongside other

partner, but we believe we have a voice as well. Net Mundial, an

Internet governance high‐level panel, I want to mention one aspect

because I think it’s fairly important.

Net Mundial was fundamental in terms of the Internet governance

development. It was an ability of people to come together. As I was

saying earlier, Internet governance, governance of the Internet, we have

this ability to discuss it in various fora. Governance on the Internet is

fragmented across a range of different organizations with privacy being


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discussed in some places, with cyber security being discussed in some

places, and not necessarily coordinated across many different platforms.

Net Mundial was a unique occasion where a number of us came

together for reasons that will be explained to you in other sessions

during this week.

Multistakeholders, the stakeholder community, came together in Säo

Paulo in Brazil, and did two things. One said, what are the fundamental

principles of this Internet governance that we’re concerned about? The

openness of the Internet, the singularity of the Internet, the respect of

human rights, the respect of privacy. What are these fundamental

principles, and secondly, what is the roadmap going forward? What do

we want to do in terms of the Internet governance agenda? It set out a

roadmap. Part of that roadmap was the need to have a process where

governments, where other stakeholders could come together to discuss

these wider inter‐governance issues.

When a new minister in a new country said, as we heard earlier, “What’s

this Internet about? How do I stop fraud on the Internet? Where do I go

to get advice on child protection on the Internet?” There needs to be

the ability, there needs to be the process where people can be involved

in those discussions, can understand where advice is and where the best

processes are to learn about those issues. That was one of the things

that came out of Net Mundial. This is a process going forward.

The energy that came out of Net Mundial is being captured in a number

of initiatives with the World Economic Forum and with other players, to

make sure that this energy, this process of being able to discuss Internet

governance continues.


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Nigel, I’m going to see if you could pass the energy torch for just a

moment to our guest in the room?

NIGEL HICKSON: Sir, here is the energy torch.

FADI CHEHADÉ: I have two energy torches. Good morning to all of you. I am Fadi.

Welcome to my town. I live in LA when I’m here. I think I slept in my

bed 20 nights this year. That’s not a good record to keep, but during this

meeting I get to sleep in my bed, which is a good thing. I live down the

street and I welcome you all to this city, which is really not a city, for

those of you who are here for the first time. Many people think LA is a

city, but it isn’t. It’s a collection of cities. It’s many, many little cities

that together look like a big city, but it isn’t a major city.

ICANN 51. All of you are here for the very first time at an ICANN

Meeting? Some of you have been here before? How many people for

the very first time? Okay, a great majority of you. A couple of you

attended a meeting before. I’ve been at ICANN for two years, and a

little bit. I’m new by ICANN standards. I’m still viewed as a Newcomer.

I’m going to tell you right now that it takes time to get your hands

around this endeavor called ICANN. I’m still learning. Two years on and

even in my place as the place as the President of ICANN, it’s incredible

how much happens within ICANN.


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Brace yourselves, because it’s a lot that will be coming at you from every

direction. We have a staff that is really here to help you get through

that week, so please rely on them, otherwise frankly it will be a bit

overwhelming. I also want you to appreciate one thing. ICANN is

different from anything else I assure you you’ve done before. It’s

different from anything I’ve done before. I’ve built companies, I’ve built

communities, I ran major parts of IBM, and nothing prepared me for

ICANN. Nothing. Why?

ICANN is an experiment that has not been done before. We are

responsible for the unique identifiers of the Internet. The Internet ten,

possibly five years ago, was not the powerful resource it is today. Today

it’s a resource of unequal power to bring humans together. It is truly a

human solidarity resource. It’s also an economic progress resource like

something we’ve never seen before. The Boston Consulting Group

predicts that in 2016, in the G20 economies alone, the digital economy

will be about $4.2 trillion.

This is more than most countries spend on energy, if you divide it up by

countries. It’s quite remarkable how big the digital economy has

become. Now, the social economic and even political impact of the

Internet is putting a lot of focus on who runs it, because suddenly people

are waking up. Of course it all started with President Rousseff of Brazil

going to the UN last year at the GA, after allegedly her phone was

bugged, and she made a big statement. She said, “Who runs this thing?

Who’s in charge?”

That’s a President of a pretty big country standing up in front of the

other leaders of the world saying, “Who runs the Internet?” I know for a


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fact that several presidents, including the President of Mexico, went to

their cabinets and asked, “Who runs the Internet here?” Most cabinets

didn’t know what to answer, because really, who runs the Internet?

That’s a difficult question and I think you're right – nobody and

everybody. That’s not a good question to political guys. They don’t like

that.

The Vice President of a big country in Latin America told me, “Listen

Fadi, the Internet is very powerful and we governments like power.

We’re going to do something about it.” At least he was the honest one.

At least he was telling me what’s on his mind. The reality is it’s up to us

to make sure that all of us run the Internet. This is what’s making me

stay in this job personally, and I hope it will entice you to want to invest

time in this community.

Now, having said that, let me not mislead you about what ICANN is and

does. Let’s get the record straight. ICANN has a part of the Internet

governance ecosystem. We are not the Internet governance ecosystem

by any means, and if anyone conflates our involvement in the Internet

governance ecosystem to mean that we are running it, that’s a mistake.

I spend quite a bit of time telling people we don’t run the Internet

ecosystem, we’re just a part of it. We’re a member of it.

What we do however is very meaningful. Why? I’m going to explain

ICANN to you as I explain it to the simplest people that are not technical

but use the Internet. My 88‐year‐old mother who’s never used a

typewriter but now spends half of her day on an iPad. She will be at the

opening tomorrow. It will be her first. She’s coming to see what this is

about, because she thinks we make the iPad. I say, “No, we don’t make


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the iPad. Mummy, we don’t make the iPad, we just do some things on

the Internet.”

How do I explain it? I’ll use this explanation because it might help you as

well when people tell you, “You went to this ICANN thing, what do they

do?” If you drew an hourglass, if we were to view the Internet

simplistically as that, the bottom of the hourglass are the networks, the

infrastructure. How many networks are in the Internet? Anybody

know? It’s close to 70,000 now. There are 70,000 networks that make

up the Internet. Is there a network? No.

In the infrastructure part, the Internet as we call it is actually highly

fragmented. It’s 70,000 networks. What makes them look like one is

the middle, which I’ll come to in a minute. Let me first go to the top.

What’s at the top of the Internet? The applications that we all use.

What is the most common application most of us use? Email? The

worldwide web is an application. What Tim Berners‐Lee invented is an

app. It’s one of the many apps. Of course now there is massive

fragmentation of apps. How many millions of apps are there on top of

the Internet?

So the Internet is highly fragmented at the top, highly fragmented at the

bottom, but in the middle it comes together because of the unique

identifiers and the protocols. That’s the only reason why when you type

www.ibm.com anywhere on the planet you always get to the same exact

machine every time, ever since the Internet started. That’s what we do.

We are responsible for the unique identifiers that make the Internet

look like one Internet. If we go away – and we won’t, don’t worry – but


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if our role is fragmented, then we no longer have one Internet for the

world.

Now, last year there was worry that our role will be fragmented. Talk in

the press was that China – China has 655 million Internet users today.

Many people said China will take its middle of the neck and go and

create its own. They can still use the same networks. They can still use

all or most of the applications at the top, but they’ll have their own root.

In fact we had unconfirmed reports that they actually have another root.

They even informed some new gTLD applicants, “Why bother with

ICANN? We already have you in our root.”

There was worry. Why are we worried if the Internet fragments its an

issue? Some pragmatists may say, “It’s okay, there could be five

Internets.” When Merkel thought that her phone was being bugged she

actually called for a German Internet, or a European Internet. She did. I

was in Paris when she went to [unclear 02:04:14] to discuss it with the

French Foreign Ministry, and France said no, thankfully. Some people

were advising Merkel, “You know what? Maybe the easiest way to get

control of this is to have our own thing.”

The interest to fragment the Internet, or the danger of fragmenting the

Internet, comes from different places. It comes from political pressures

like the ones we saw on Merkel’s Chancellery. It could also come from

businesses, because businesses are getting attacked a lot on the

Internet. Some of them are saying, “Why don’t we create private

Internets that talk to a public Internet?” This is all happening, and it’s

real. What we are doing at ICANN is strengthening the resiliency, the


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stability, of this middle ground and ensuring that we stay with one

Internet.

The question I ask you now is why? Why is it important to have one

Internet? Well, let’s start with the economics. We commissioned a

study of the Boston Consulting Group earlier this year that studied what

happens when we have fragmentation of the Internet. They called it the

e‐friction study. What if we have a lot of frictions in the Internet? The

impact is very clear. Go look at that study. It’s on our website and the

BCG website. It showed for example that frictions are high.

They rated Sweden as the country with the lowest frictions on Internet

digital economy and in their ratings they only looked at 60‐odd

countries, 65 or so. Nigeria came last. The difference between Nigeria

and Sweden was two and a half points of GDP, because of the frictions.

This is not digital economy GDP, this is the country’s GDP. This is huge!

This is more than Nigeria spends on its own energy. Omobola Johnson,

the Minister of Telecommunications of Nigeria, called me. She said, “Are

you kidding?” I said, “No, here’s the study.”

Frankly she was extremely positive about how to work with the study.

Now we’re engaged with her to figure out how can we help Nigeria

remove these frictions, not increase frictions, so that we can help

Nigeria gain some of that lost GDP. Economically, a fragmented Internet

has an impact. Let me shift to the other side now, because I do believe

there are two sides to the value of the Internet. It is a force of economic

progress, but it is equally a force of human solidarity.

Human solidarity is a great value that we get from one Internet. Ideas

flow. Communities build across the world, so that it doesn’t always have


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to follow the Westphalian model of nation states. Nothing wrong with

the Westphalia model. It will stay and it will be here and we will work

with that, but we do not need necessarily to build an Internet that’s

divided like the telecom network along country lines. That’s the power

of the Internet – that it allows flow of ideas and economic progress on a

global level. We work hard for that.

I’m going to touch on one more thing and then maybe a few of your

questions. ICANN is a very humbling place. Why do I say that? I am a

CEO. I’ve run my company since I was 28 and I’m very used to making

my decisions, pretty much like any CEO does. It doesn’t work like this at

ICANN. At ICANN, all of us get involved so that we can build things

together. Sometimes you’ll hear people refer to it as the “bottom up”

mode. Some others call it “crowdsourcing” as how we do things here at

ICANN. This is an ethos at ICANN that cannot be tinkered with. It’s who

we are.

Therefore when you start getting involved at ICANN, and as much as, like

me, you come with your ideas that you want to move the ball forward,

you want to get things done, what I’ve learnt the hard way, and I’m still

learning every day, is that at ICANN it doesn’t matter how much we get

done. What really matters is how much community is in everything we

do. The moment I miss that view I have a problem. I’ll be candid with

you. We had a major problem in Istanbul a month ago where I was

pushing very hard with my staff to get something done on the

accountability track, to make ICANN more accountable.

Some of our community members felt that we were ahead of them –

that their input was not taking into the process. We stopped. We had


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to stop the whole process cold and start all over, ensuring that every

member of the community felt they were part of the process. This is

something I want you to frankly focus on as you enter the community,

and if you're not ready for this I’m warning you, it will be very hard,

because in this community everything is done bottom‐up, which means

it take more time.

It means, for those of us who are focused on efficiency, maybe we will

be frustrated, but frankly it actually produces better results and we have

to believe in that. We have to believe that when we’re together we can

reach better results. That’s what you’ll see throughout this week. Any

questions for me? How much time do I have? I have two minutes

supposedly. How about ten minutes? Can you buy me ten minutes from

my next meeting?

This is Cassia by the way. She is ICANN. She’s one of the many staff

members at ICANN who runs my office, and I’m very, very fortunate to

have her on my side all the time. She keeps me honest and on time. I’ll

buy seven minutes because I came late. All right, who’s first? Sir?

[ARSEN TUNGALI]: Thank you for this opportunity. I’m a Newcomer. My name is [Arsen

Tungali 02:10:50]. I’m a first‐time Fellow and it’s a privilege for me to be

standing here, to be able to ask you a question. When you started you

said that ICANN is not running the Internet. You say that we are just

parts of that ecosystem. I just made a Tweet about that. My question

for you sir would be, what would you tell a young man, a very young

person, what ICANN is?


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FADI CHEHADÉ: Welcome [Arsen]. Good to have you here. What country do you come

from?

[ARSEN TUNGALI]: DRC.

FADI CHEHADÉ: Welcome. I’m also African. My parents are from Egypt.

CHRIS MONDINI: I want to know what is your Twitter handle?

FADI CHEHADÉ: Arsen [Barguma 02:11:53]. Welcome Arsen. Good to have you. Look,

the simplest answer to “what does ICANN do?” has two parts. First, tell

people how we do things, not only what we do. One of the things that

we miss in the magic of ICANN is how we get things done, not only what

we do. So always, when somebody says, “What does ICANN do?” make

sure your answer is two parts. First, we are responsible to making sure

the unique identifiers – the website names, the IP addresses of the

Internet, are stable, resilient and functioning for the whole world.

The way we do it is we do it together in what is called the

multistakeholder approach. This is unique, because I bet you there are

others who could do our job equally or maybe even better than us, but

it’s how we do it that legitimizes who we are because we do it from the

bottom‐up. The governance of the Internet should look like the


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Internet. The Internet itself doesn’t have a centralized place that runs

the Internet. Technically the Internet is built as a highly distributed

network where the edges of the network are where the smarts are. The

smarts are not in the network, it’s in the edges of the network.

This is how Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker and Bob Khan created the Internet.

In the same way, we govern the Internet without a centralized authority.

We govern it by being a polycentric – as the legal people call it – a

polycentric approach to governing the Internet, where there is no

center, where there are many, many different groupings. ICANN

happens to be one of these, but we’re only part of a broader grouping

that is open. Does this help a little bit? Okay. I hope by the end of the

week you’ll have a better answer than me.

SPEAKER: Hi Fadi. I had the chance to meet you two years ago in Dubai. Hi. My

name is [Hanan Budjai 02:14:02]. I’m from Morocco. My question is

how does ICANN balance between the interests of governments and the

decisions that are being generated bottom‐up here? In other words,

where do you get stuck exactly, when you want to do whatever you

want to do, like your work?

FADI CHEHADÉ: Thank you [Hanan]. By the way, she didn’t do a sales pitch, but the next

ICANN Meeting is in her home country, in Morocco. We’re going all to

Marrakech and we’re looking forward to that. Thank you for welcoming

us there [Hanan]. Look, the role of governments is a contested one

always in the ICANN and Internet governance space. Let me set


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something clear. Without governments, we don’t have a

multistakeholder model. Let’s be clear that we need governments to be

involved. Excluding governments doesn’t get us anywhere, and having a

position of an anti‐government position doesn’t get us anywhere.

Governments have the power to enforce laws. Governments have a

public responsibility role in their countries. They have to protect their

citizens. It’s not up to me to sit here and judge governments, that a

good government will involve them, that a bad government will keep

them out. That’s not our job. Our job is to give governments, within the

multistakeholder model, their role. If they have a role at the table that is

a role equal to everyone, then they will participate. Some of them may

not like it.

We had a meeting recently in Säo Paulo called the Net Mundial meeting,

and [Murella] and others were quite helpful in making that happen. But

during that meeting some of the governments came before the meeting

– this was a big multistakeholder meeting – and they said, “Where are

we going to sit?” and we said, “With everybody.” They said, “No.” Some

governments said, “We go upstairs in the hotel. You guys can talk and

then you come and inform us so that we can make a determination of

our position.”

We said, “No, that’s not how it works in the multistakeholder model.

You stay with us.” Then the Brazilian team came up with I thought a

very novel idea, of in the room putting microphones, one for

government, one for business, one for civil society, and then we told

governments, “Like everybody else, you're going to stand in a queue.”

“Oh no, we don’t stand in queues,” or, “Can our microphone get a


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different priority?” We said, “No, everybody goes in a round robin.” It

was really novel for them, and guess what? The longest queue was the

government microphone. They were all in line to speak.

So we need them at the table. We need them involved. If we keep

them out of make them feel that their voice is not heard, we’re going to

have a problem. I’m happy to report to you today that I was just briefed

this morning that our Government Advisory Committee had now 140

countries. When I started at ICANN 2.5 years ago we were barely at 70.

That’s very impressive. It’s very impressive. On top of that we have 31

international governmental organizations, sitting at the GAC, advising as

well and observing.

So the GAC has become a very important organ of ICANN, but it has to

be a organ that participates like everyone else in the process and guides

us moving forward. So there’s a balance, and it’s a difficult balance.

Sometimes governments say, “We don’t provide advice, we make

policy.” We say, “No, at ICANN policy is made in a multistakeholder way.

If you want to participate in policy‐making, you go sit in the gNSO or the

ccNSO and you participate in making policy. You’re welcome to do

that.” That’s a new thing for governments.

That’s why at the Net Mundial meeting for example, India stood up at

the end and said that they vehemently disagree with the outcome – not

because of what’s in the outcome but because of the process. They

said, “We don’t understand this process. What is this process that

governments are equal to everybody?” It was so new to them – to that

team that came from the Foreign Office of India, that they objected on

the role of the governments, rather than on the substance. Because on


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the substance, obviously what we came up with there in Brazil was spot

on, and the world signed up for it, right? Next question.

SPEAKER: I’m not a Newcomer. My wife is. She’s there. She can get up and raise

her hand, so she’s a Newcomer. Thank you, so I get an opportunity. My

name is [Naresh Shazwani 02:19:00], I’m from India. At the outset, let

me congratulate Fadi for his eloquence – the way he simplified the

Internet. Trust me, in the last ten years of my being with ICANN, nobody

has explained it to me this simply, so well. The way there can’t be five

United Nations, there can’t be five ICANNs. There can’t be five roots. I

share his concern on China.

I’m a turncoat. I’m a turncoat fan of his today. He has really briefed us,

which I don’t think can be really better explained by anybody, that we

can have many roots, but not in the process of disintegrating the entire

Internet. Undoubtedly we all are supporting what he has said, but I

must say that if we leave this word “multistakeholderism” it will be

much better, because the moment we are saying “multistakeholderism”

there is a voice of multilateralism, and unnecessary conflict is taking

place.

Because ICANN is not a multistakeholderism. ICANN is all‐inclusive.

Everything is there. Multistakeholderism may create some kind of

possibility of a conflict. My request of this opportunity is Fadi, you are

the all‐inclusive. You are absolutely a representation of all‐inclusive –

your mother or 88 years, and your own thing, every bit, is all‐inclusive.

Please multiply it, let’s drop this multistakeholderism in this conference

and say we are all inclusive. We are here to empower each and


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everybody. I would be very grateful to you if you bring this in this

ICANN, empowerment through all‐inclusiveness.

FADI CHEHADÉ: Thank you [Naresh], thank you. Welcome to his spouse. Good to have

you here ma’am. We’re happy you can join us. I will comment on what

[Naresh] said because he makes a good point. He and I – I’m Egyptian –

but I grew up in Beirut. I witnessed the civil war in Beirut and I

witnessed brothers shooting each other during the ‘70s and ‘80s over

labels, labels. [Naresh] comes also from a great tradition and a great

country where also labels cause people to divide instead of to unite.

Thank you for that.

It’s very important that we don’t make multistakeholderism – I actually

hate the word “ism” – that we don’t make it a religious thing. We don’t

start wearing it like it’s some kind of a badge of honor. There’s nothing

wrong with different approaches to things. However, let’s make sure

we’re clear that we want an inclusive model, a model that all people, of

all kinds, of all sectors, of all geographies can participate. I second what

you’re saying [Naresh], and I know that frankly I don’t like the word and I

don’t like making it a religious word.

It’s very important that we embrace the principles that came out or Säo

Paulo, Brazil, for the world to have an inclusive [inaudible 02:22:38] that

respects human rights, that gets everyone involved. That’s what’s

important. I agree with you. Thank you [Naresh].


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I’m going to be the most unpopular person in this room, but we do have

a tech team who’s been amazing in supporting us but has to start up

again in a very short time. I’ll take my unpopularity, but we need to

wrap this up.

FADI CHEHADÉ: One last question and then we let the folks rest and get ready for the

next meeting.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I have to go with the person with the mic.

SPEAKER: Merci President. My name is [Mobine 02:23:34]. I am from the

Regulation Authority from Senegal. I would like to thank you for the

great job that you do and the great presentation and the clear

information that was given to us. We can see, through this presentation

this morning, this presentation of ICANN, that ICANN has a great role, an

important role, and multiple identities that are managing the

governance of the Internet. The identifiers are guaranteed respect. We

know now that there’s a lot more demand for extension creation.

It was much easier before when we had the classic extensions for

countries, but now we have more and more demand request of creation

for extension. What is the logic where I can accept the new extension?

What is the logic behind it? What is the technical logic? Can we plan

tomorrow maybe an extension that would go to last name, family

names, for example?


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FADI CHEHADÉ: Thank you for coming from Senegal. We are very happy that you are

here. I will speak in English because it seems that the greater amount of

people will understand be better. The new gTLD extensions, the new

top‐level domains as we call them, that we are extending, he was asking,

“What criteria are we going to use to keep extending the model?” How

many more of these top‐level domains will we add? Is there a limit, a

technical limit, to the limit of that?” he asked.

The question first on the latter part – is there a technical limit to the

number of TLDs we could add. He added an interesting point. He said,

“Could we one day imagine that every family would have its own TLD, or

every individual?” Right now, the research shows that there is no

technical limit that we’re anywhere close to in the domain name system.

It’s virtually possible to add as many as we want. Now, there is some

logic in how we do that, and I want to assure you first of all that in

ICANN, I don’t make these decisions – we make these decisions.

The new TLD program was created after seven years of community

debate. These are not things we decide overnight. Sometimes it’s to

the consternation of many, but that’s the way it works. We have to

debate it as a community. That led to the new gTLD program as we

know it. We opened the application period a couple of years ago and we

thought, “Maybe 400‐500 people will apply.” We received 2,000

applications. Frankly, I wasn’t at ICANN at the time, but my colleagues

tell me people were surprised. There was no expectation we’d get 2,000

applications.


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We’ve been just trying to process these, as you know. Today, close to

400 of the new TLDs are in the root. When we started a year ago we

only had 22, and now we’re up to close to 400, right? 500 even. Okay,

so it’s going very fast. With this round, we’ll probably get to about 1,200

to 1,300 in the root, and there’s no technical concern about adding

these. Now, in this meeting you happen to be at, the discussion about

when we open the next round, and under what criteria, and what will be

the lessons learned that we will apply, is starting. It’s starting here at

this meeting. There is a lot of groundswell to do that.

The community will decide. I think please, if it’s important to you – and I

know that it’s important for Africa because Africa and other developing

countries missed, frankly, the engagement they should have in the early

stages of this program. It breaks my heart that many people I meet

around the world today say, “We didn’t even know. We had no clue.”

ICANN had done, in my opinion, too little, too late, to let the world know

this program is here. We’re not going to make this mistake this time.

We’re going to take our time to let the world know, to ensure, that

anyone who wants to participate and has the capability to do it, is part

of the program. That I can assure you of. That is a criteria I will own and

I’ll make sure happens – that we don’t again go somewhere around the

world and people say, “We didn’t hear about it.” I was even in China

recently and many, many companies had no clue this program was

coming. We now allow Chinese characters, Cyrillic characters, Arabic

characters, etcetera, so the uptake there is going to be huge. Just in

China we expect, easily, 500 to 1,000 new brands want their own gTLD –

not just families but brands.


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I’ll finish answering questions with one interesting anecdote, story, that I

hope you’ll enjoy. I was at the Vatican recently, and Vatican applied for

.catholic. they applied for .catholic in Latin characters, in Arabic

characters, and I believe in Chinese characters, in all three. They didn’t

do Cyrillic. I was curious. What is the Vatican going to do with .catholic?

I went to visit them and I said, “So what is your plan with .catholic?” It

was really fascinating, because it tells you where this could all go. The

Vatican explained to me that for over 400 years the Church prints

something called the Red Book that every institution in the Catholic

ecosystem receives. What does that Red Book contain?

It contains the names and contacts and information for every Catholic

authentic institution on the planet – whether it’s a church, a hospital, a

school, an association – they’re all printed there. If you’re in that book

you’re authentically Catholic. They will replace that book with .catholic.

For the first time in 400 years they’re going to start the plan to phase

out that book so that any institution in the Catholic system is

authenticated by having an address .catholic. So this shows you just

some of the things we’re seeing coming, and how people will use these

for their own purposes.

I just signed .istanbul with the city of Istanbul. The city of Istanbul is

considering giving every household its website. If you live in Istanbul

and your address is 523 Attaturk Way, you’ll have

523attaturkway.istanbul, and when you go there you’ll find your water

bill, your electric bill and your ordinances that are important to you, any

information on the schools of your kids, all in your own way, to deal with

your city. The plans I hear around the world are fascinating. Some of

them will fail. Some of them will do very well. We’ll see.


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Our job at ICANN is not to make money, as you know. We’re a non‐

profit. Our job is to make it possible for everyone to do what they need

to do. If they fail, we’ll be sorry, but that’s not our job to make them

successful. Our job is to make it possible; that the public, the consumer,

has choice, there’s competition, and that it’s all possible for everyone to

identify themselves in this new virtual world we all live in. Welcome to

ICANN. Merci.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I’ve just talked to Anne‐Rachel. First of all, thank you Fadi, because that

was really special, for you to stop in on your busy day. I just talked to

Anne‐Rachel here in the meantime. She’s going to come back at 1:30

pm and we’re going to start with the questions. Those that had the

questions, we’re starting here at 1:30 pm. We’ll wrap up this discussion,

because you could feel the importance on this discussion on Internet

governance and then the questions on the ecosystem. That’s where we

start at 1:30 pm.

I don’t know if we’re going to have more surprise guests. I guess you’ll

just have to come this afternoon to see, but we’ll welcome you back this

afternoon. We really appreciate your attention and your interaction this

morning. Have a good lunch you guys. See you back at 1:30 pm.

[Tape change to Newcomer‐2‐12oct14‐en]


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Hi everybody. Welcome. Good afternoon. Maybe some people need a

little coffee, I don’t know. Thank you all for coming back this afternoon.

We always appreciate a return audience. What we want to do is just go

backwards a little bit before we go forwards. We did have some

questions this morning before the very surprising interaction with Fadi,

which we all embraced for 45 minutes, and that was awesome. If

there’s anybody in the room that had a question for Anne‐Rachel, Nigel

and Chris, if you want to put your hand up? Awesome. Patricia’s going

to start over there.

[GABRIEL LEVIT]: Hi, my name is [Gabriel Levit 00:10:53] and I’m from Brooklyn, New York.

Actually, a few of my questions were answered from some of the

experts afterwards. I just have a very general question and whoever’s

wanting to or is most qualified to answer, that would be great. The

notion and the concept of human rights keeps being invoked here as

something that ICANN has its eye on. Is there an expert panel or an

ombudsman for human rights within ICANN?

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: We don’t really have any department or anybody who’s responsible for

this? You may know that actually this is one of the things that was

brought up internationally, one more time. I guess for lack of real place

to take it, and given that ICANN is always seen as the place where

Internet things happen, I guess because also of our participation in the

international community, since the WSIS everybody tends to view ICANN

as the repository of Internet governance. One of the things I’d like to

say is that – as we said again this morning – there’s the part that’s the


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governance of the networks and the identifiers, coupled with the

governance of the gTLDs, where we have a set of contracts with people.

A lot of the rest though is also governance on the Internet. Giving access

to people is not one of the mandates of ICANN. We, as Fadi said, really

take care of the glue of the Internet, as I call it, which is the DNS,

including the names, the protocols, and the IP addresses. In there the

public responsibility aspect for us is to make sure the root and

coordination we’re doing is giving everybody ccTLDs, gTLDs and

networks in general, via our friends from the RIRs that distribute IP

addresses, the IETF, who does the protocol and parameters.

We come together and we make sure that the Internet is one,

interoperable, secured at the root where we are, and available for

everybody. The rest on top – access and having Internet as a right – is

really not for us. One of the things that we have to do is get out there

and explain to people, “Yes, we’re fulfilling our part of the human right,

which is making sure that the root works, making sure the Internet stays

one with all those different networks.” The rest though, in terms of

taking it to the last mile, taking it to the communities, giving access to

the developing world and all of that, we can be part of it in things that

are in our mandate, but that is the responsibility of others.

As Nigel said, it’s the ITU, it’s the governments that are sitting in ITU, it’s

WIPO, it’s the International Commission of Human Rights, it’s all of them

to come together and make sure that communities are connected and

have access to the Internet. I think that’s where we stand. Chris, you

want to say more?


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CHRIS MONDINI: Maybe Gabriel your question is because it actually appears in some

sessions on the week’s agenda. I wanted to emphasize what’s really an

interesting thing about ICANN, and that’s that any part of the

community, as we’ll see in a minute, can bring their ideas to the table

and open them up for discussion. It’s very legitimate and to be

expected. For example, there’s an observer on the Governmental

Advisory Committee, the Council of Europe, which has published a paper

on this topic. I think there are groups coalescing around the question of

at least exploring, just as you and Anne‐Rachel have done with your

exchange, where, if at all, does ICANN’s core work intersect with the

issue of human rights and questions of human rights.

Already there are people who raise questions for further discussion, and

I’d encourage you to sit in and participate on the sessions, because you’ll

learn that around the edges of some of the very distinct things, like for

example for new gTLDs and the way they’re being used to organize

communities and so forth. Or there’s a very interesting but rather

esoteric question about the date that registration details of people who

register websites, and how that’s maintained and how that’s made

available to people that need or ask for access to that.

There are consumer protection concerns that people put under the

umbrella of human rights. So all of these are around the edges of

ICANN’s work, so what we can do as a community is get diverse

stakeholders in the room and really examine where ICANN’s work

intersects with that and determine if there needs to be more happening

going forward. It was interesting to me when I looked at the week’s

agenda to see the term “human rights” appearing in a couple of places,

because there’s more demand to get these questions out on the table.


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[OMAR ANSARI]: My name is [Omar Ansari 00:16:45]. I’m a Fellow from Afghanistan. You

have this very nice multistakeholder policy process chart there. My

question is, how do stakeholders on a local level actually come to these

meetings, or into this structure? Are they elected? The only thing that’s

very clear is the government stakeholders. There are ministries,

probably ICANN would send an invitation and bring them on board, in

the GAC and other committees. What about the businesses, civil society

and other players? That’s one question.

Number two, are there specific sessions for let’s say business? I’m a

Fellow, but in the business category. Whether there are some specific,

other than general Fellow meetings and sessions? Then we can learn

more about what’s going on, right? I’d be interested in speaking more

with the business constituency – who they are, what they do, and how

we can get involved in some of their processes. These are some of the

issues.

CHRIS MONDINI: I’ll jump in. Thank you for the question. Your first question is something

I was just about to answer with these two slides we’ve been toggling

back and forth between. We’ve talked about the different stakeholder

categories, but then how do the people that are actively being active

self‐organize? How do we define community and so forth? We’ll talk

about that in just a minute. With regard to helping you get the most out

of this experience here and have an ongoing affiliation and participation

as a business stakeholder, I’m very pleased to see there are four

flipcharts, one in each corner of the room.


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A 4:00 pm, at the conclusion of this session, we’re going to divide into

four stakeholder categories. These four, there are nuances of how you

define them, and of course you’re welcome to define yourself and

you're welcome to be in more than one stakeholder category, but

generally we say business, governments, the technical community and

civil society users, advocacy and so forth. What we’re going to do is

having some of the representatives from the business constituency and

other business, private sector constituencies, directly talking to you

about the week ahead and how you can become involved. We’re going

to do that at 4:00 pm in the four corners of the room, as sort of a

breakout session to let you all stretch your legs.

NIGEL HICKSON: Just very briefly I’ll answer one of your points, because it’s a question I

remember I had when I was told, “Would you like to work for this

organization called ICANN?” Someone described it as a membership

organization to me. I thought, “What’s a member?” I’ve never been

very good at membership organizations because no one has invited me

to be a member. Of course ICANN isn’t like that. I think your question is

very perceptive because although in the different groupings of ICANN

that Chris might have the opportunity to go over – the registrar’s group,

the users group, the IP community group – there’s lots of different

groups.

Although within those groups they elect a community, everyone likes

electing committees, because that’s’ the way efficient business is done,

those groups are open to everyone. Whether you’re an SME making

sweets or doing whatever – whatever you’re doing as a business person,


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whatever you’re doing as a Internet user, whatever you're doing in the

intellectual property field, you can come along to an ICANN meeting.

You can go into one of these groups and say, “I’m one of you,” and

people will shake your hand and say, “Welcome.”

You can go across the field. It’s completely open, and I think this is one

of the real strengths of ICANN, “Come along, get involved.” We’re not

going to try and categorize you. We’re not going to try and say, “Hang

on a minute, let’s have a look at your badge, can you show me your legal

credentials before you come into this meeting?” Go into the GAC in the

tent, where they’re holding their meeting. Obviously the governments

are there, representing their governments. They have flags and they talk

because they’re the governments, but there’s loads of other people

there as well, listening. All are welcome.

ALBERT DANIELS: Albert Daniels, Manager for Stakeholder Engagement with ICANN for the

Caribbean Region. This is the type of question that we like to hear in the

GSE Team: how do we get involved? Because the essence of the

objectives of the GSE is to get involvement and participation at a

national level. Nigel is absolutely correct. Perhaps the GAC is one of the

few places within ICANN where there is a formal process to join most of

the others. As he said you can just step in, but the dimension I wanted

to add is that in the GSE we are encouraging at a national level the

thought, the establishment, of national multistakeholder structures.

Even before you think about, “How am I going to get halfway across the

world to Singapore, Marrakech?” or something, at a national level you

can start following what’s happening in the various stakeholder groups


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and you can start the dialogue, even at a national multistakeholder level.

By the time perhaps representatives of countries get to these different

parts of ICANN, there is some formulation, there is some thinking that’s

been done on national positions and you can input those positions,

remotely or physically, to the ICANN processes.

It’s something additional to think about. What can you do at the

national level to bring the different stakeholders together to start talking

about the issues that are important to you, in terms of economic and

social development.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Sarah, would you mind bringing the mic back to Sal? He was one of the

questions from this morning. Did you get your question answered this

morning?

[SAL]: Partly, but I really wanted to interact with Fadi because he’s like a rock‐

star to me. I missed that opportunity but all the same, I have other rock‐

stars on stage; Janie, Anne‐Rachel. All the same. I’m Sal [unclear

00:24:25] from the Gambia. I’m a product of the wonderful Fellowship

Program. When I first came into this ICANN world I didn’t have a clue

what it was all about. This morning when I was coming for my breakfast

meeting this old guy was like, “What is ICANN? What does ICANN do?”

I’m like, “I can’t tell you that in an elevator, I need about five minutes,

because if I say ICANN runs the Internet that’s not strictly true. If I say

ICANN oversees the Internet, that’s not strictly true. It’s somewhere in‐

between.”


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So when I was listening to Fadi it gave me a lot of ideas as to how we can

dumb‐down ICANN so that people can understand what it really means.

Obviously there’s been a grey area where Internet governance and

ICANN issues interplay. Obviously the wider constituents in the Internet

are very much concerned about Internet governance, but ICANN’s

mandate doesn’t really delve into Internet governance per se. What

Fadi said about this is what ICANN does, I’m asking what can ICANN do?

Thank you very much.

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: Nobody’s jumping in. Okay, I’ll take that easy question. Thank you Sal

for being here. What does ICANN do? The coordination of the

identifiers, but also getting together to actually take that message, plus

how we deal with issues around the Internet together. This comes to his

question. I think if you stop at what you learn here then you haven’t

done justice to yourself and to the Internet, because you now know and

your duty is to go back and share. This is one of the things that we do,

as Albert said, with the Global Stakeholder Group.

There’s the core that’s always working on the contracts, on the policies

with the communities. There’s also the few of us who actually go and

say, “This is what’s happening and these are the reasons why you need

to be involved.” So it’s as much what does ICANN do as what’s in it for

me. This is one of the first questions that I keep in mind when I go see

people. Why should they be interested? That differs of course from if

you’re coming from business, if you’re coming from civil society, if

you’re coming from government. Depending on where you come from

then your take is different, in terms of even one policy.


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Let’s just say WHOIS for example. That little thing that started as a

technical system through which the guys who are managing the

networks had to just know each other, in case something happened, so

they could call each other and all of that. Today that database is

precious to me as a consumer, me as a person on the Internet. Because

I don’t want my data shared with the whole world on the Internet. My

government actually has laws on protection of people’s data, sharing of

databases that registrars have to follow, business who is the registrar

would love to use those databases to actually market to my profile, and

so on and so forth.

So what we do on ICANN can look really technical, but at the same time

it has so much reach out to all of you, I think this is why I keep saying,

“ICANN is actually all of us.” So yes, what do you do for the Internet

when you go back home? I want to know.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: We’ll take a couple more questions, but again I think we’re at a point

where some of the gentlemen sitting down to my right – Leo Vegoda

with our Business Excellence Program, formally with the IANA, he’s here

to talk a little bit about that; what does ICANN do as related to the IANA

function. It might be a little clearer. He’s going to guide you to the

Monday session, which is going to make it very clear. It’s going to be a

very basic session on who, what, why, when, how, where. Leo can

answer some questions here.

Rob Hogarth is here to talk about the bottom‐up policy building. What

does ICANN do? ICANN is community and staff. So when you're saying

“ICANN” we have to differentiate in a way, because those of us sitting


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here, we’re getting paid to be ICANN, but we have a certain remit. We

are end users, but in our place in ICANN as staff, we’re facilitating the

ICANN community who is building bottom‐up policy about security,

stability and the operation of the DNS. So we have some functions,

“what does ICANN do?” Some of those functions are support functions

so the community can guide “what does ICANN do?”

So I see some value in going to the gentleman to my far right to talk

about those things, because I think it will help some of the other

conversation, feed it with a little bit more knowledge. Then as I said, a

little bit this afternoon our DNS Industry Engagement folks will be here

about IDN and the registry and registrar functions that ICANN does. If

there’s a pressing question you absolutely want to get to these folks, I

would like to take it, but if not we can move and get some more

answers, and then get your questions again. But if somebody has

something really pressing, I want to address it now before we move to

the next bit.

SPEAKER: We have a question from [Rodney Sitarea 00:31:17]: “Based on my

experience, and that is in ICANN in Latin America, I have somewhat of an

erroneous perception that many people think there are only technical

activities, which makes those same people feel excluded automatically

to participate in ICANN’s activities in different areas.”

ANNE‐RACHEL INNE: I guess that is definitely a perception, and that one went on for a long

time. Again though, as we’ve ben discussing since this morning, as the


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Internet evolves nothing stays technical anymore. We find ourselves

today having to reach out to people to explain what we do and how they

can be involved. This is just because as more people come on the

Internet the issues and the frictions really pile up.

JAMES: My name is James from Zimbabwe. This one is for Nigel. I listened

intently to your presentation. There was a question that came into my

mind: how can you stop two bulls from fighting? On the one hand, we

have our eloquent speakers who talk about the singularity of the

Internet, and on the other you get strong arguments about the break‐up

of the Internet into national and regional parts. Will this fight end? Will

there be consensus?

NIGEL HICKSON: I’m glad this meeting’s not public! I think it’s a good question. As Fadi

said, we work in this process because we believe in an open, single

Internet. We believe in an Internet that everyone has a participation in

and can benefit from; can benefit economically, socially, politically,

whatever. At the same time one has to be realistic. One realizes that

different governments have different agenda. Governments have

agendas for very good reasons. Governments are sovereign.

Governments have different agendas, governments have different

views. Sometimes governments have views that are not necessarily in

line with the sort of process that we have here for the management of

the critical resources that we’ve been describing. We have to work with

that.


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In terms of meeting the challenge, one can meet the challenge by

eloquence and by rhetorical speeches, or one can meet the challenge by

hard, economic evidence. The hard economic evidence is that if a group

of countries at the United Nations said, “Right, Mr. UN, we think that

rather than the Internet being managed through ICANN and the RIRs,

rather than having the current situation of a multistakeholder approach

in terms of the DNS and the distribution of IP addresses, that the UN

should do this.” if those countries told the UN, “Yes, the UN should do

this,” and there was a vote and it was in favor, then what would

happen?

Do we think that countries like the United States, Europe, a lot of the

western world, a lot of other countries, Japan, etcetera, would want a

UN system in terms of running their Internet? They probably wouldn’t.

They’d probably be quite happy to have the current system for running

the DNS on the Internet, and then you’d end up with this fragmentation

that Mr. Chehadé talked about this morning. Fragmentation of the DNS

is something that would be disastrous.

Last year I started my talk to the Newcomers by saying, “How many of

you think the Internet is a single Internet?” It’s a stupid question, isn’t

it? But as Fadi explained, and as Anne‐Rachel explained this morning,

the Internet didn’t grow up as a single Internet. There were a number of

different networks based on different protocols, and they were brought

together because people could see the vision of the benefit of what a

single Internet could bring.


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you Nigel. I just want to thank our presenters from this morning

and all of you for being so flexible with all of the happenings that went

on. I do want to make sure we continue to get the questions answered.

We had this slide up when Fadi came in. I’d asked Chris to wrap up the

morning a little bit in order to hand off to Rob and to Leo, just a bit

about going from a sector vision into the multistakeholder model. We

talk about what ICANN does, and then we talk about how ICANN does

what it does. That’s what we just want to preview, and move ourselves

over to Rob to break it down.

CHRIS MONDINI: These are a couple of slides. You heard me say in response to the earlier

question that for purposes of shorthand, we often think of these four

stakeholder categories as business, technical community, government

and civil society. Now, those are very broad categories. What I tried to

do on a slide was put a few boxes that show the communities of interest

that participate in ICANN, and there’s just a couple of points I want to

make. Going around the slide you’ll see that business is represented.

Business is everything from the big Internet companies when you think

of the Internet.

They could be ISPs, they could be small businesses, family enterprises.

They could be any business with a presence on the Internet. Or they

could be business that are in the domain name sector, and some of you

may be here from registries who run a registry or a top‐level domain of

the Internet, or registrars who are people who you might go to if you

want to register a web address. You will see them here in force. The

civil society organizations, there are a number of advocacy groups that


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are very interested in things like accessibility and other issues related to

the overlap of ICANN’s work and their issues, depending where they

come from.

We have end users, and again, if you fall into no other category at all you

likely fall into the category of an end user, because we have nearly three

billion people connected to the Internet. These can be individuals, they

could be a chapter of an organization or businesses sometimes sit in this

group. We talked about IP addresses. We talked about the protocols

and parameters. We talked about our sister organizations and that work

on the technical aspects of the addressing system. They’re here as well.

Then finally we’ve heard a lot about governments and IGOs. Now, the

point of this is to say that a good idea can really come from any corner

of this stakeholder universe. There are examples. It’s not a hierarchical

top‐down system where somebody makes a proposal and everybody

votes. It’s actually a way to crowd‐source, to create an opportunity for

inputs from a diversity of people, the diversity of visions for the future

Internet, to propose something. If you think of a program like the new

gTLD program for new domain names, that was proposed from business

interests and organizations.

Over the course of seven years the ideas, the details, the way it would

be rolled out, were socialized through all of these other categories and

finally brought to fruition. The internationalized domain names that

we’ve made reference to, which are the domain names in different

scripts; Cyrillic or Arabic, etcetera, this was very strongly supported by

the end users who are really the next billion people connecting to the

Internet. For the most part they don’t want to be switching keyboards


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back to Latin letters to navigate the Internet. That idea had to be

floated with the technical people to see how it might work, with all the

other stakeholder groups that you see here.

If there’s consensus generated then it goes back up to the Board. Ideally

the ICANN Board, which is also very geographically and stakeholder

diverse, is in a position to really ratify or approve. The next slide

answers the question about how some of those categories on the

previous slide have self‐organized. You’ll get to know the acronyms. I’ll

highlight a couple of the groups here. In the green circle there’s

something called the gNSO. Rob is going to talk in more detail about

how they create policy. That’s a group dedicated to generic name policy

development.

There are the domain name sector companies represented there. the

ISPs are represented there. Non‐profit organizations, NGOs, are also

sitting there. They meet. They’ve been working since before the

weekend on their agenda. Their work is underway and it’s really a large

part of the mainstream, what you see and hear in the media and in your

organizations about ICANN’s work. The ccNSO, the plum colored box,

those are the country codes. Anne‐Rachel explained how country code

registries were developed and established. That’s a group again from

around the world. Very different business models.

Very different ways they run their two‐letter country based registry.

They get together, they share ideas and policy and make

recommendations to the Board. The circle that’s called At‐Large is

familiar I’m sure to many of you. That’s really where the interests of the

user are represented. You’ll see a very robust collection of international


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advocates here. They’re a great source of volunteers and a great source

of ideas for ICANN. Regardless of what category you find yourself in, you

may be interested in the technical issues of security and stability or the

root server stability. There are those groups as well, which are issuing

advice, opinions.

They’re advisory committees, so if you go and look at the SSAC, you’ll

see a whole list of their opinions on the work of ICANN and how the

security and stability of the Internet is affected by that work. That’s just

to bring you a step closer from these broad categories of stakeholders to

more distinct categories, to how they’re self‐organized. One last thing I

want to say is you don’t have to be a member. You don’t have to sign up

for anything. You could join a mailing list. You can join a remote

Working Group. You can never come to another ICANN Meeting again

but still be a very full participant through tools like remote participation.

Don’t feel that just because there are groups with labels that that’s in

any way a barrier to participation. The point has been made that it’s a

very open and accessible structure.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you Chris. I’ve flipped through a couple of slides. This

presentation is available on the Newcomer session, so any more looking

into what the organizations are, you can go there yourself and take a

look. I want to wrap up two things. One, the Fellowship morning

meetings you keep hearing about, the Fellowship Program, we have

meetings from 7:00 ‐ 9:00 am Monday through Thursday. It’s in the

schedule. The Chairs of each of the SOs, ACs, stakeholder groups or

constituencies, come in and talk to us for half an hour. It’s like this.


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They’re not talking at us, they’re engaging in questions about, “So what

does the business constituency do?” and, “If it only allows members of

corporations, how can I as an individual contribute in a business way?”

or, “What does the ISP do?” So the Chairs will be there to simply talk

with you and answer the questions specifically about what those groups

do. Everyone’s welcome to join us. Look on the schedule. It’s an open

session and we’d love to have you there and learn a little bit more. The

regional staff I’ll just touch on. We had several here this morning, and

Albert I think is still here from the Caribbean.

Our regional staff, the GSE Team, we have members all around the

world; Australia, Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North

America, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean. We’re out there in

everyone’s region to talk about what is important for you. Each region or

most of our regions have a regional strategy that’s built by the

communities. “What’s important in my region? What’s happening? Do

we need better access? Do we need some policies that are speaking

about developing nations having a better stake in the new TLD?”

What is it that’s important? Our regional teams work with our regional

groups and then bring it up to a global level. So it’s really important to

know that they’re on the website, they’re easy to find. Rob, I’m going to

segue right over to you.

ROB HOGARTH: Thank you Janice. Hello. I can see everybody at the back of the room.

Can you hear me okay? Great. My name is Rob Hogarth. I’m a Senior

Policy Director with ICANN and I also have additional responsibilities of

community effectiveness, community engagement. I want to give a


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quick nod to our interpreters at the back of the room. For some of them

with whom I’ve worked in the past I tend to talk a little quickly, so I’m

going to make an effort to be a little bit more deliberative this

afternoon. Janice, how much time do I have?

I’m already into Leo’s time. Sorry about that. The purpose for me to

chat with you all today is to give you a little bit better understanding of

some of the core work we do within ICANN, from a policy development

perspective. Don’t worry – we’re not going to get into the details of

particular processes or bylaw provisions. What I simply want to do is

give you an overall sense of what we try to do, how we do it, why we do

it, who can participate, who does, just to give you a general flavor of the

policy development support work that we do as ICANN staff, and some

of the work that the communities with whom you are involved do their

work.

My experience from participating with Janice and my colleagues at past

ICANN Newcomer Sessions is that just because you’re a Newcomer to an

ICANN Meeting doesn’t mean necessarily that you're all Newcomers to

ICANN. Many of you have participated remotely, you’ve observed what

we do from afar. This is really the cool opportunity though to be here,

to see what takes place in person, what happens in the hallways, what

sort of discussions go on, not only in he meetings at the main table but

what goes on out in the hallways or in the discussions and at the

receptions.

It’s a really fantastic opportunity and I hope many of you will really take

advantage of not just these formal sessions but all the informal sessions

– the opportunities just to stop somebody in the hallway and say hi.


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From a staff perspective we’ve got the little blue lines, as I’m sure Janice

has told you. Please don’t stop to grab one of us, ask us a question or

share a business card or anything like that. We’d be delighted. Let’s talk

a little bit about this one section of the overall ICANN universe called

policy making. If I can get a show of hands, how many people are

familiar with that little puzzle game called the Rubix Cube?

For those of you who aren’t, it’s a little cube puzzle and the goal is to get

all the different colors all aligned on the same side. Then people who

are really good at it want to get it into lines and patterns and things like

that. In many respects, when you’re looking at ICANN from afar or even

at the meeting, it’s almost a Rubix Cube. Some people can masterfully

do it in ten seconds. We’ve heard about those famous people, and some

of us, like me, will have it sitting on a desk for years and never be able to

accomplish it.

That should not concern you; whether you’re the person with the ability

to do it quickly or the person who just lets it sit on their desk, to stop

you from being involved in policy development at ICANN. Essentially,

everything that goes on within ICANN has a connection with or some

relationship with policy making. That is a core function of what we do.

What I’m going to talk to you a little bit today is how that fits in from a

process standpoint with the various communities. The important thing

from a principle perspective is really to understand how we do it.

The best way I’ve learned to describe it to Newcomers, whether that’s

new participants or Newcomers at a meeting, is to focus on these four

key elements – multistakeholder, bottom‐up, open and transparent. I’ll

talk a little bit about each one. What does multistakeholder mean? It’s


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what Chris just showed you. It shows you a number of different

communities, interests, perspectives, all coming together in one place, in

one arena, to talk about the issues at hand. They could be problems with

small aspects of how domain names are allocated. They could involve

small technical issues in terms of how the DNS is administered.

They could involve bigger picture issues in terms of privacy, human

rights and other aspects of the use of this grand wonderful

infrastructure that we all call the Internet. So the critical aspect of the

multistakeholder component is that we involve many different points of

view. At different points in time there’s a recognition that we’ve got just

the right people in the room, or on the phone, or on the Adobe Connect

open meeting space. In other respects there are issues that say, “Do we

have the right people in the room? Do we need more people? How do

we get the right people to be together to discuss the issues at hand?”

The overall concept at ICANN for policy making is multistakeholder – as

many different pieces and parts as possible. The other aspect – and I

heard Christopher mention this earlier – is the concept of bottom‐up.

It’s the sense that there’s not one overall body that dictates what will

happen, but that all of the stakeholders participant and work together to

identify problems and then work through them, bringing the

recommendations up from the community for a decision by the Board of

Directors. The concept again that the overall default should be that the

information comes from the community and works its way up as

recommendations to the Board.

The last two aspects can be confusing – open and transparent. They

seem to be pretty close. Unless you're a real master of English, do you


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really understand the difference? Sometimes even people for whom

English is their first language have difficulties with them. Open means,

like we talked about before, that anyone can come in and participate.

It’s an open spirit of participation and involvement. While there may be,

for some communities, some eligibility criteria or some means for

applying to or becoming a formal member of the process, that does not

mean at any stage of the process that someone who’s been involved for

the first time can come in and participate.

It’s that openness concept where there’s not so much a welcoming, a

recognition that there is the opportunity to participate. The related

aspect of that is transparency. It’s great to be able to participate but as

Chris and others have mentioned, look at this meeting. Look at how

many people are going to be here tomorrow in the big room next door,

and how many people participate. There are so many Working Groups

going on, drafting teams, advisory committees. In addition to the SOs

and ACs I’ll talk about for a little bit, each one of those is broken up into

a number of different areas.

It’s great to be open. It’s great to have many people participate, but

then how do you actually know what’s going on? How can you find out

what happened in this Working Group or that Working Group? How do

you keep up with the deliberations of another community that may

impact your work? The concept of transparency at ICANN is that,

including this session, just about everything we do is recorded,

transcribed, reported in some way, shape or form, so that there’s a

capability later to catch up on a meeting that you missed, to learn the

perspective of somebody who shared from another community their

point of view.


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The idea of transparency from that perspective is that everybody within

this arena that we call ICANN has an opportunity to know where an idea

came from, what point of view someone’s expressing, or who they might

want to talk to to debate or discuss a particular point of view. Those are

the overall principles of ICANN in terms of how we approach policy

development. By the way, that extends beyond the formal policy

development work. It gets involved in the decisions about the ICANN

budget. These principles are applied to the five‐year strategic plan of

the organization, and other broader decisions that the organization

makes. It’s not just limited to our policy development work.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these slides. Chris’s earlier slide

was fantastic in showing you the different interest groups. Essentially

what this describes is simply the formal official organizations, the SOs

and ACs, who make up those stakeholder groups that Christopher

showed you on the earlier slide. The major difference here between the

orange and the blue is that it’s the SOs that make the formal

recommendations of policy to the Board of Directors. The ACs have

been created by the Board of Directors to provide advice to the Board,

as they deliberate and decide whether they should accept, reject or

modify the policy recommendations from the SOs.

That’s the overall big picture division between the two. Now, I could

spend time talking about the smartphone‐looking thing up there. I put

up this slide just to give you the perspective that the SOs have very well

thought out procedures, processes and expectations for how policy

development should take place. At any time, whether you’re in the

ccNSO or the gNSO you’ll go to the bylaws of the ICANN organization,

you’ll go on the website and look and see what the documents of the


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ccNSO or gNSO are. You’ll understand what each piece of those

processes takes into play.

The important thing is that you appreciate and know that again, at every

step of the process, every meeting taking place out in the hallways and

elsewhere, is plugged into a piece of those processes. You should, as a

participant in ICANN, be able to know at any point in time where

something is in the stages of the process. One thing I wanted to link,

that you will see in any process at ICANN, that’s very important – and it’s

part of this open and transparent piece, is the opportunity for public

input, the opportunity for public comment.

That’s a very important component of the policy development work. I

tried to do a count of all of you sitting here and you’ve got about 100

people in the room. When we have a Working Group, either at the

ccNSO level, the gNSO level, we probably have about 20 people involved

in the process. Those are the folks who are willing to be on a telephone

call for an hour and a half every week, for about six months some times,

talking through the various issues, working through a document,

debating and trying to figure out how a technical issue can be solved or

resolved. The other 80 of you who aren’t participating in that should

have an opportunity to review or comment on some of that work.

So the concept built into every PDP is at certain stages of the process

there’s a pause, there’s a release of the publication or a report on the

progress of the group, and then there’s an opportunity for the other

members of the community who haven’t had an opportunity to

participate, to comment, to give their points of view, to provide their

perspective. That’s a very important component of a lot of the work


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that ICANN does. I’m being careful and still probably making the mistake

of mixing this concept of community input and public comments.

Community input is the overall perspective. Public comments just

happen to be, in most respects, something you submit via email in a

document.

Some comments come from an individual. Some comments may come

from an organization. The critical aspect there again is that there is a

forum or venue for these different points of view to be shared. Again,

and why I’m trying to be careful, is that public comments don’t

necessarily have to be in writing. A very important component of an

ICANN Meeting is that ability face‐to‐face or in front of a group, standing

at an open microphone, to present your point of view to the Board of

Directors, to the Chair of a Working Group, to another Committee that’s

developing some thoughts or processes. Those are also elements of

public input, public comment, that ICANN receives.

We are constantly challenged, from a policy development standpoint, to

figure out if those processes work. We constantly have to monitor those

processes and decide if the right tools are being used for the right issue;

if the right mechanisms are being used for the right process. That’s

something that, on a regular basis, we want to hear about from you,

from your comments in the community. Is the public comment period

long enough? Is the summary of the public comments received enough?

Did we accurately capture the transcript of the public forum? Was a

recording provided?

Then the important piece at the end of that is how did the Board of

Directors take that into consideration in their decision? How did the


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Working Group take it into consideration in terms of maybe re‐editing

their report to reflect your point of view? Again, it’s trying to honor

those principles I showed you earlier, of making sure that there’s

opportunities for input, and making sure that once that input is received

that there’s some evidence that something was done with it.

Now, from a policy development support staff perspective, depending

upon who you talk to, we have a relatively large community. The policy

development support staff is just one part of the ICANN staff. There’s

about 24‐25 of us who are responsible for supporting the various SOs

and ACs. So of the 24 of us we’re pretty much spread around the world,

in a number of different countries. I think the latest calculation, we have

about 19 hours of the day covered. There may be periods of time where

somebody may be awake but not at their computer, but we’ve got

pretty good coverage throughout the world.

We look to hire people based on their ability to communicate with

people from a variety of different cultures, knowledge of different

languages and the rest, because while the primary operating language of

ICANN is English, we’re always looking for opportunities to say, “Who

else can contribute?” and it may be someone who doesn’t have English

as their first language facility. So it’s very important from that

perspective. Then from time to time we just have to work on bringing in

specific issue experts, who may have a particular understanding of

perhaps IDNs, or Internet security or DNSSEC – something where the

existing group of us don’t have that knowledge or background, and so

it’s very helpful to supplement that.


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Why do we do it and what’s our mission as an organization of staff? It’s

essentially to help support and manage the work of the community.

ICANN staff does not set policy. ICANN staff exists to provide support to

all of you, to make the decisions, to make the recommendations to the

Board of Directors. I’ve been at ICANN now six years and I can’t count

how many times people have come up and said, “What’s the ICANN

policy going to be on X or Y?” and I say, “I don’t know, that’s not my job.

That’s the community’s job.”

I help to administer the processes. Members of my team, we work

together with members of the community to make sure the meetings

run smoothly, that we have the right mix of people, that we have the

ability of the technology and capabilities so people can communicate

real‐time. We set up the Wiki sites, the websites, monitor and post the

chats, the transcripts, try to keep everything organized and set up, so

that all of you don’t have to worry about the logistics, but that you can

focus on what is the issue, what’s the challenge, how do we accomplish

it.” Again, that’s an effort that’s constant and never‐ending.

We’re never achieving perfection, but we’re always trying to identify

new and better ways to conduct our work. Depending upon the

metaphor you may want to use, some people call us referees, some

people call us servants, some people call us collaborators. The bottom

line is we want to contribute and help you all do your work, so that the

actual debates, the discussion, can take place in a productive manner.

Just as a sort of wrap up, while you are here, there are many people who

aren’t here, and most of the time you may not have been here at ICANN

Meetings.


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What we try to do is recognize that not all the work does take place at

the meetings, although a good bit of it does. Throughout the course of

the year, Working Groups are meeting, decisions are being made,

conversations are taking place, and on a monthly basis we try to provide

an update on that. We produce a monthly policy update. The goal is

that it comes out about the third week of every month. We produce

translations of the policy update in the six UN languages, and you can

subscribe to the service for free on the ICANN website. Some of you

may already do that. Others may just be learning about it for the first

time.

You might be interested in one topic, you might be interested in all of

them. It’s about a 30‐page document every month. You might just be

able to pick out particular issues or communities you’re interested in. I

encourage you to try it out. The neat thing about it is that we identify

who the contact people are for particular issues and give you the

opportunity to reach out to us so we can answer questions. That’s the

overview. I’m more than happy to answer a question or two. I’m here

all week, as are members of the team, look for the blue.

If they’re not a member of the policy team they’ll quickly point out one

of us. Afterwards I’ll be hanging around, happy to share my business

card and chat with you at any point in time. Thank you for the

opportunity to chat with you today.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you Rob. I hadn’t told them about the blue. I was trying to keep

that on the down low. Thank you so much. If there aren’t any questions

for Rob right at this moment, like he said he’ll be here. I’m going to pass


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over to Leo who’s going to do a couple of slides here about the IANA

function.

LEO VEGODA: Hello. I’m Leo Vegoda. I’m going to talk about the bit in the red circle,

the operations side. Everything Rob’s team does informs everything that

happens in the IANA Department, because it’s not involved at all in

making policy. It says on the slide that ICANN took on a responsibility

for IANA functions in 1998. Of course the IANA functions pre‐date

ICANN, in fact they pre‐date the Internet, as the Internet. Back in the

1970s there was Jon Postel and the other datagram networking people,

and they said, “We need a socket registry.” That was the invention of

the Internet, IANA functions.

The IANA registry was originally a little paper notebook because of

course they didn’t have iPads back then. Now ICANN has been providing

the IANA function since 1998, and the IANA functions are provided

within the IANA Department. We look after unique identifiers. We don’t

make the policies for how they’re allocated or registered or assigned or

reserved or anything like that. What we do is we maintain the lists. If

you go away from hearing me mumble at you and you remember one

thing, IANA maintains lists. That’s really what it is.

Rob’s team supports the SOs that make the policies that decide how

those lists get updated. We go and do the bits of updating those lists.

The reason we maintain lists is interoperability. It boils down to if you

were a member 30 years ago and you had word processors or

spreadsheet software and you wanted to edit a file that had been

generated on another computer, if you weren’t running the same


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software they were running, chances are you couldn’t edit it. It’s the

same with networking. If you have Vendor A and Vendor B and they’re

doing their own thing, then you’ve got to buy into their ecosystem, and

you can’t do that on an Internet because it’s all about autonomously

managed networks that interoperate and interconnect.

So you’ve got to have well defined communication protocols that work

no matter who made the equipment or no matter who made the

software. You go and look at how the Internet works, and to some

extent it doesn't really matter if your computer runs Linus or Windows

or Mac OS or whatever it is, because it can create the IP packets that it

needs to send out. It can use TCP sessions or other session protocols to

go and manage those communications that allow you to communicate

over the Internet. It doesn’t matter who the vendor is, the

communication works.

That relies on well defined protocols, and those protocols all have little

parameters – things that say, “If you’re doing it like this, use code three,

and if you're doing it like that use code seven.” All that kind of thing.

It’s got to be listed somewhere. Those are the lists that we manage, and

in the session on Monday we’re going to go through the protocol

parameters, the root management function and the Internet number

allocation function. We’re going to explain how they work, do a high‐

level process overview for each of them for the allocation of resources,

or the registration, or update of registrations, and I think it’s interesting.

We’ve got a title that’s something like “IANA – who, what, why, when?”

But we’re subtitling it as “IANA is more boring than you think it really is”

and that’s because what we want to do is, we want to make sure that


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people leave the room understanding that when we do what we do,

we’re doing it in an open and transparent way, following the policies

that have been developed in public, by the appropriate SOs. We don’t

really make a lot of decisions. We design a form to implement a policy

so that we can gather the information required by the policy, or we

assign a ticketing number so that we can track a request in our system,

but we don’t go and decide what the criteria are for making the decision.

We don’t decide whether an applicant qualifies or doesn't qualify.

That’s decided by a formula, if it’s an RIR requesting resources, or if it’s a

protocol parameter that’s managed by the IETF it’s decided based on an

RFC that’s published, or by an ICG designated expert – someone that

isn’t employed by ICANN but is a volunteer who is a technical expert

about a particular technology. What we’re doing is we’re doing the

administrative work of making sure that the system works efficiently.

We’re not actually making those decisions about who gets what and

how it’s registered.

We maintain these registries. They’re basically lists. Most of them are

really straightforward and a lot of them are not updated from one year

to the next. There are others that are much more frequently updated.

They tend to be hierarchically delegated. That means we run the top‐

level and then we hand off the next level to someone else. For instance

in the DNS we run the root zone and we get a few changes for that each

day, but not a large number. We hand off the .com or .za or .museum to

someone else, and they go and handle all those millions of changes that

affect the something in .com or the something in .za. They manage that

on a day‐to‐day basis.


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The same with the RIRs. We do half a dozen, at most, things for them

each year. They go and do lots of things every day. Now, we do this

with agreements with a lot of people. We have an MOU with the IETF.

We have an exchange of letters with the RIRs. We also have a contract

with the US Government. There’s lots to be said about that, but not by

me. There’s this whole US Government oversight transition thing going

on. I won’t really talk about that, but in support of making sure that

anyone who’s taking part in that discussion understands what the IANA

functions are, I encourage you to come to the Plaza Pavilion room

tomorrow at 10:30 am.

There are some beautifully crafted slides. Kim Davies who has done the

slides has done a superb job. He’s not just good at what he does, he’s a

good artist as well. There are lovely pictures on them, so they’re very

engaging. I thoroughly encourage you to attend that session. We’re

going to explain why we’re a little bit more boring than you think, but

we’re not totally boring. We’re lovely people.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you Leo. Everything you ever wanted to know about IANA and

we’re afraid to ask. That’s wonderful. Are there any questions for Rob

or Leo? You guys are getting away clean. We have one right over here.

Our DNS industry engagement will be on their way up.

SPEAKER: Hi. I do have a technical question, but because I’m not technical I’m

hoping you can answer it, so I’ll be able to get it. Back here in the US, I

guess it was just over two years ago, there was a large, epic battle to not


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let the “stop online piracy act” pass here. One of the biggest arguments

by its opponents was that it would interfere with the technical

operability of the Internet. Would you be able to speak to why that was

the case?

LEO VEGODA: I’m going to have a go, but I’m also going to say that there are a couple

of sessions on DNSSEC coming on this week. The people you’ll find in

those sessions will be able to give you a much more thorough answer

than I can give you now. As I understand it, the bill that you refer to was

asking the people who run DNS resolvers to provide lies as answers,

instead of providing the actual answer. The idea was that if a request

was received by a DNS resolver for information about a place where you

could download something that was breaching some intellectual

property thing, that you wouldn’t go and tell them where it was. You

wouldn’t give them the IP address, you’d give them something else

instead.

There’s an extension to the DNS protocol called DNSSEC – DNS Security

Extensions – and what that does is it allows the system that’s sent the

DNS query to cryptographically validate the DNS answer. If you have a

law that says, “You must tell lies,” then you undermine the ability to use

this DNSSEC protocol and the DNSSEC protocol does have some real

benefits, because it’s possible to use a tax on the DNS to go and redirect

people to sites that are full of malware and various other nasties, so it’s

one of those things where the technology itself is neither good nor bad –

it’s the way that you use it.


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If you abuse the technology then you make things easier for the people

who want to do bad things. That is my attempt at not very technical

answer to the question, but I would really encourage you to go and

speak to people attending the DNSSEC sessions or people who

participate in SSAC, because they will be able to give you the technical

answers that are properly technical, but also would probably be much

better at explaining them in a non‐technical way than me.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I started to glaze over again Leo. I’m sorry. You say the word “technical”

and it’s like I go “whoo”. There is a DNSSEC Workshop. There’s the

DNSSEC for Beginners tomorrow at 5:00 pm. I’m a huge supporter of

that. Even for those of you who are confident in your knowledge of

DNSSEC, it’s really an invigorating program run by some of our friends

from Verisign and some other of the corporations that have some stake

in DNSSEC. There’s a lovely skit. We have one remote question Lauren?

LAUREN: The first question is from Jason Hinds, who’s in Barbados. I’m sure the

weather’s lovely there right now. His first question is: “Are there ever

any emergency situations, for example security threats, that require

IANA to essentially take an immediate decision outside of policy, to

protect the availability and stability of the system?”

ROB HOGARTH: There are no situations in which we take a decision outside of the policy.

However, there is a process for moving through, in most cases, root zone

changes, very quickly in an emergency situation. If there is an


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emergency of any kind, there is a way to go and make sure that urgent

updates can be made. That’s supported by all three of the root zone

partners. The root zone partners are ICANN, as the IANA functions

operator, NTIA, that provides the authorization and oversight, and

Verisign, who’s the root zone editor and publisher.

LAUREN: A second question is from Venezuela. It’s a question/comment from

[Mike Lee 01:24:26] again. “On the challenge of the transition of IANA,

there are many controversial issues. Communities have a huge

challenge to achieve the necessary openness to listen and create open

mechanisms that are as representative as possible, for all parties to feel

involved and encourage them to share scenarios to make progress on

the current and future operations of the Internet, while maintaining the

openness that characterizes the Internet.”

ROB HOGARTH: Yes, that’s more of a comment I think.

[SPEAKER]: Hello, I am [Aktar 01:25:10] from Argentina. I’m following your

explanation of the IANA function. I want to know, in short terms, which

is the supervision made by the American Government on the IANA

function?

LEO VEGODA: It’s a good question. On a day‐to‐day basis the only role NTIA has in

anything to do with the IANA functions is root zone management. In


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root zone management we, as the IANA functions operator, go and do

all the work with the customer to understand what the change is. Let’s

imagine it’s a top‐level domain and they want to update their telephone

number. We go and make sure that the update that’s going to happen

and be published in WHOIS is what the requestor wants. We then send

that to NTIA for authorization. NTIA goes and looks that we have

followed the appropriate process, and clicks a button on a web

interface, and that then comes back to us.

So I can’t tell you what the NTIA web interface looks like. I’ve never

seen it, but I understand that basically the NTIA’s role is very much

clicking a button. That’s the only day‐to‐day involvement in the IANA

functions.

[MISS INGA]: [Miss Inga 01:27:15]. I’m from Moldova. I’d like to just clarify one

question. It was mentioned that in 1998 ICANN was established as the

steward and operator for the IANA functions. Does that mean that IANA

was created before 1998 and it was a separate entity?

LEO VEGODA: Good question, yes. Thank you. The IANA functions pre‐date ICANN. In

fact, the IANA functions to some extend pre‐date the Internet. Directly

before ICANN was providing the IANA functions, they were provided by

ISI, which is the Information Sciences Institute, which is a part of USC.

They were running the IANA functions previous to ICANN providing the

IANA functions. I can’t remember how many years for. The ISI was


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running the IANA functions because Jon Postel, who was the original

person providing the IANA functions, worked at ISI.

So this is one of those things where there were some computer

scientists who got a government grant to do some computer networking

experiments. They found that in order to do their experiments

effectively they needed to keep some registries, which were originally

written down in Jon Postel’s notebook, on paper. Success ran away.

Suddenly this experiment that they did in the lab escaped the lab and by

the 1990s the Internet had started to become a really genuinely useful

thing.

So there were contracts issued and all the rest of it, but this is to some

extent, the Internet is an explosion of success that came out of an

experiment. We were never really meant to be on the Internet. The

Internet was the test network, and not the one that we were meant to

get, but we got the Internet, and it’s okay.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Guys, we’re going to have to cut the queue. I hate to do this because I

said we could have all the questions, but we’re at the point of backing

up into a couple of other sessions. If we have time I’m going to circle

back around. My esteemed colleague to my left, Christopher, was just

saying that the video we alluded to earlier, and through some technical

difficulties weren’t able to show, really also provides a good explanation

to that.

So at the end, once we get through our DNS Industry Engagement and

our Security Stability and Resiliency, and any questions, we’ll come back


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around and we’ll play the video as we’re moving around to our breakout

sessions. Fair enough? Leo my friend, I thank you.

LEO VEGODA: Thank you very much. Thank you.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I’d like to introduce, to my right, Fabien and Caitlin. They’re two

members of our DNS Industry Engagement Team. I will turn the clicker

over to you Fabien.

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Hello. My name is Fabien. I work for the Registry Services Team within

the DNS Industry Engagement Team. That may be a new word. Before

we delve into what we do within our purview, I’ll take you through a

very basic introduction to what registry and registrars are, and what

their role is. Many of you may be already aware of this, but at least this

will provide you for an opportunity to have a level of field. Be aware

that this is a simplified view of it, made for explanation purposes. Let’s

start with the basics. We have the Internet and a Internet user.

Everybody visits websites.

That’s just an example of a use of a domain name. Here in this case,

example.tld, which would be in the top‐level domain. For that to

happen there has to have been a name registered, a name to exist on

the Internet. We also have on this picture a registrant who wants to

own the example name in that top‐level domain that I use as an

example, TLD. I’m sorry for the rendering of the boxes. Here again


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another key component for this to happen, we need DNS servers that

will serve the resolution of that request for example.tld.

Now, how does this name get into the DNS? We have registries whose

role is to maintain the zone for their TLD. Here at some point the

registry will receive a request for the creation of this domain name in

the DNS zone. That happens through registrars. The registrars are

actually the party that’s facing the registrant, when it comes to

registering domain names and administering the registration of these

domain names. This is another key important component. For the

name to get into the zone of the TLD, the registrar uses automated

systems, and in particular the one that’s called the shared registration

system or the EPP protocol.

I won’t get into that, but this is just to inform you that registrars use

automated interfaces with the registries. That’s a system that the

registry maintains for use by the registrar. It’s important to also have

that in the picture. What I was going to say is that the picture here,

between the registrant and the registrar can be a little more complex

because there may be resellers involved, between the registrant and the

actual ICANN‐accredited registrar. Caitlin will explain to you what the

accreditation concept is.

Then to further complete the picture, the registry operator not only

operates the DNS but also the SRS. It also operates the WHOIS servers,

which provide for the registration and domain name information to the

public. This is a service that anybody can use on the Internet. There are

slight differences between the type of TLDs, of gTLDs, but know that

there is this concept of thin and thick WHOIS, that you may want to be


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aware of, but this is a bit technical. If you want you can come to me and

ask me questions about this if you need to, but generally the registry

provides this service for the data of the domain in its own.

Another key important system is data escrow, and this means that the

registry provides a copy of its registration and zone data to a data

escrow provider, who maintains this data, so in case of a failure of a

registry, there is a copy of this data available for potentially transitioning

the registry to another operator. That’s the use of this service. Here I’m

adding the DNSSEC notion because this is important, particularly for new

gTLDs, because this is a requirement for the new gTLD registry operator

to offer DNSSEC with their DNS service. What you have listed here in the

systems are what we call the five critical functions of a registry. This was

to explain to you what a registry is, and what a registrar is. Does

anybody have any questions?

OMAR: My name is Omar and my earlier question was the same – what’s the

difference between registry and registrar? For example we have a

domain name of, you gave the example of example.tld. That’s’ being

accessed by Internet users. It’s registered by the registrant at the

registry, which is managed by the registrar? How does it work? Then

the DNS server keeps the information? Is that so? Where is ICANN

here?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Thank you very much for the question, because this is exactly the

purpose of our next slide, to explain to you what the role of ICANN is in


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this picture. So we’ll come to that in a moment. Actually, this is the next

image. We’ll get to that detail, to explain it to you. For your question

about the difference in terms of who runs what between the registry

and the registry, in most cases, registrars and registries are different

companies. For a given TLD you have only one registry but you can have

many registrars. They’re different entities. The registrar only deals with

customers with the registrants, that are his customers.

He facilitates the registration of these names to the registry, and he

applies his own pricing policy, his own marketing. That’s his work. The

registry on this side is maintaining the data and the accuracy of the DNS

servers. The DNS servers are operated by the registry. That may not be

clear in this picture, but all these systems that are listed are operated by

the registry. This is the main difference. Does that answer your

question? Okay.

OMAR: Here, if I’m going to register omar.com, I’m buying this from Go Daddy

for example. Go Daddy is the registrant?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: He’s the registrar.

OMAR: Registrar, okay. He’s buying it from the person who owns .com or the

entity?


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FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Exactly.

OMAR: That’s the registry?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Yes. You can consider effectively that the registry sells names to the

registrar, who sells them to the registrant.

OMAR: Okay, and ICANN deals with the registry?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Registry and registrars, and we’ll come to that in a minute. I’ll turn it

over to you.

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: Hi everyone. My name is Caitlin Tubergen and I’m the Registrar

Relations and Contracts Manager at ICANN. I’m Fabien’s counterpart.

He works with registries, I work with the registrars. I hope this slide will

help answer your question. You’ll often hear registries and registrars

referred to as the contracted parties. That’s because ICANN has

contracts with both entities. This diagram on the slide will show that

there are some arrows that lead to ICANN on the left of the slide. One

arrow is from the registrar, and the registrar has a contract with ICANN

called the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.


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On the bottom you’ll see that the registry operator has an RA or a

Registry Agreement, which is also a contract with ICANN. What that

essentially means is that there are provisions in these contracts that

ICANN can enforce. The department within ICANN that enforces the

contract provisions would be ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Team.

Fabien and I are the DNS Industry Engagement Team. We serve as a

liaison between the contracted parties before they reach ICANN’s

Contractual Compliance Team.

An example might be that in the RAA there’s a provision that says,

“Registrars need to deal with abuse complaints in a certain manner, and

in the event that an ICANN accredited registrar does not deal with the

abuse complaint, as is provided in the contract, they may receive a

notice.” I believe it’s three notices and then they could be breached and

potentially terminated. So it’s important that the contracted parties

abide by their contracts. You’ll notice a couple of other relationships on

this slide that Fabien already touched on, but some other contracts that

are involved are registrants enter into a RA with their registrar.

Registrars and Registries also have agreements between one another

called the Registry Registrar Agreement, or the RRA.

Again, the contracts that ICANN is concerned with are the RAA and the

RA. There are some barriers to entry into signing a RAA, which shows

the difference between a registrar and a reseller, for example. A

registrar is directly in a contract with ICANN and in the event the

registrar does not abide by the contract, ICANN can do something about

that. Whereas the reseller is in a contract with the registrar, but ICANN

is not in any sort of contract with the reseller. Next slide please. Did


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anybody have any questions about that slide before I move onto the

next?

DANIEL [LAYBANS]: Good afternoon. Daniel [Laybans 01:43:03], Cayman Islands. There was

no mention of the country code relationship.

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: That was my mistake for not mentioning that. Our Department deals

specifically with gTLDs. These registries and registrars that we enter into

contracts with are for gTLDs?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: I might want to add just one thing, and that’s that these from an ICANN

perspective, are regulated differently. ICANN regulates gTLDs, not

ccTLDs. The regulation of ccTLDs is generally a national government

purview. This is why within the policy development picture of ICANN,

the model, you have the gNSO and the ccNSO. They operate very

differently because the ccNSO, I won’t get into too much details, but it’s

more of a discussion body among the ccTLD operators.

In the gNSO there’s a very formal process to develop policies that will

then become contracts or provisions in contracts, that will then be

enforced by ICANN Compliance. Thank you very much for your question,

because this is a very important distinction we needed to make. Thank

you.


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SPEAKER: Hi. Quick question – who handles the complaints or allegations of abuse

with regard to resellers?

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: Thank you for the question. In the new version of the RAA, the 2013

RAA, there are enhanced compliance provisions in how registrars deal

with their resellers. If a reseller is causing a registrar to be in breach of

its contract, ICANN would take issue with the registrar, or send a notice

to the registrar. That leads to a good point, that it’s important for

registrars to have relationships with resellers, that will not put them into

breach of their contract.

[GAYELLE FALL]: My name is [Gayelle Fall 01:45:40]. I’m actually with AFRINIC. My

question was what is your relationship with the actual regional Internet

registries in regards to DNSSEC?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Our role is not technical, in the sense that we support the contracted

parties with their work and implement policies, as we’ll discuss in a

minute. We don’t in our team, the two of us actually, we don’t have

specific relations in that matter. We do have, in the DNS industry

engagement team, a technical services team, which works on policy

development with technical matters. I would need to refer you to the

Director of Technical Services in our team, to address your questions,

because I wouldn’t be able to answer it. I will give you my contact

information and we’ll get that question answered.


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I think Albert would like to respond, before we go to another question.

Albert?

ALBERT DANIELS: One important point on DNSSEC – DNSSEC is a very critical technology to

secure DNS information that is passed through the system. If I’m not

mistaken, in the contracts with all new gTLDs, there’s a provision that

DNSSEC must be deployed. Historically, some may have deployed and

some may not have deployed, but I think going forward with the

contracts for all new gTLDs, there’s an insistence that this important

security technology must be deployed with new gTLDs.

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Absolutely, and this is why it’s listed as one of the five critical functions

for new gTLDs. I’m not sure this is a requirement for legacy gTLDs, but it

is for new gTLDs for sure. Thank you.

CLAUDIA: My name is Claudia. I have a non‐technical question please. Obviously

there is money involved in registering a domain name. I’m wondering

about the price tag and I’m wondering whether this is what is financing

the ICANN, or if not, what or who is financing the ICANN. Thank you.

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Thank you very much. The contract with the registry includes fees.

There are two types of fees. There are set up fees and recurring fee. Set


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up fees are related to the new systems that have been put in place

within the new gTLD program, which we’ll talk about in a minute. That’s

support protection of intellectual property rights. These are one‐time

fees that the registries incur when they set up, on top of the application

fee that they paid in the new gTLD program. So these are one‐time fees.

There is a recurring fee that’s invoiced quarterly, on the number of

domains that they have. For instance it’s 25 cents fee, per domain, per

quarter. That’s the main number here. There’s a bit of complexity in

that, but that’s about what it is. Does that answer your question?

CLAUDIA: The second part was whether this is how ICANN is sustained financially,

or where else do you get money from to function? That’s the broader

question.

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Thank you. This is definitely not on the financial aspect of the ICANN

operations… I believe there’s a contribution from some ccTLDs to the

budget of ICANN, so there is a ccTLD voluntary contribution to the

budget of ICANN that I believe exists.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Right, so with the contracts with the registrars and the separate

contracts with the registries, each of the registries, with our legal

department, signs a separate contract, and that revenue comes in and

then our budget is based on that revenue. We get the registry individual

contracts, not disclosed – that’s their contract between ICANN and then.


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The registrars is a basic contract, which we know exactly what the

transaction fee will be, per, and we know exactly what the yearly fee will

be. That all feeds back into revenue and then we have to, as a not‐for‐

profit, revenue for budget. Chris?

CHRIS MONDINI: You’ll see for some of you, if you’ve ever registered a domain name,

some of the registrars for whom you would have made this transaction,

might show you what portion of your fee goes to support ICANN.

Usually it’s a few cents of your US pennies. This fee structure is also a

transparent and negotiated process, and currently at the moment with

the registrars, we’re in the process of re‐establishing the recommended

fee, these few cents that each registration gets passed on. So the

answer is yes, and it’s very important one about what sustains ICANN

and allows us to do the work that we’ve been describing, and that you

will help us to do going forward.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: There’s also a finance session. I know it had gotten moved. It’s an open

finance session. We can look it up really quick and let you know where

to take a look. It’s really a session I encourage Newcomers to come to –

that and the strategic and operating plan, because we as community, as

end users, have a say not into the money coming in as revenue and that

part, but in creating the operating plan and how the community would

like to guide ICANN on how to spend that revenue coming in.


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It’s really important as a Newcomer to start to get familiar with the

building of the five‐year strategic plan, the yearly operating plan, based

on the budget. We have sessions on all of that this week.

SPEAKER: It’s on tomorrow at 2:00 pm in Brentwood.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you. I think we have a couple more questions. One here I see,

and one there.

CARLTON: This is for Caitlin. Hi. Carlton. I heard you talk about the cancellation

termination, and Janice mentioned a legal department. I’m asking in

terms of these steps that are taken before the final cancellation, to what

extent do you all meet? Do you all meet with the individuals and

corporations and mediate with them and tell them, “This is the end

result and what’s going to happen”? To a wider extent, do you have any

litigation cases where anybody’s taken legal action against you, or where

you were forced to take legal action towards the termination or

cancellation of any agreements?

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: Thank you for the question. I believe the Contractual Compliance Team

has a session that I’d encourage you to attend, where they go through

their whole process, but to quickly go through the process, I know that a

registrar before termination will receive three notices before they’re

officially breached. Their notice procedure includes phone calls, emails


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to the primary contact, that the registrar provides to ICANN. Before the

third notice, if the issue has not been solved, there will be a breached

notice. I believe the registrar, depending on the breach, will have 30

days to cure the breach listed in the notice.

In the event that it’s not cured, a termination will be sent. All of those

breach notices and termination notices are published on the ICANN

website. In terms of… Did you ask if ICANN has ever received any sort

of legal…? In the contract, I believe there’s an arbitration provision that

in the event that you're a contracted party and you believe you're being

terminated wrongfully you can file an arbitration notice to challenge it.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: We’re going to have to wrap this up. These wonderful people have a

meeting at 3:30 pm, which they cannot be late for. Do you want to take

one more? Okay.

[EVERTON]: Hi, I’m [Everton 01:55:47] from Brazil. I’d like to know if there’s a

structure of registrar, registrant and registries, resellers? Have they

been more or less tabled, the creation of these new labels, over time?

Or was it given out once and it’s been the same ever since?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: I think that’s a very good question, because in the new gTLD round, this

model we’ve explained is pretty much the standard model. What’s

happening with the new gTLD registries is that now a registry operator in

some cases can also be a registrar for its own domain, and operate his


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domain in an integrating manner. So they an also have either a registry

or they can also have a closed registration to themselves only.

For instance a big brand, as a brand TLD, which is a status in the new

gTLD program now, they can just operate the TLD for their own use –

that is their customer or their affiliates – and then they don’t have to

open the registration of domain names to the public. This is a big

difference that’s happening in the new gTLD round. Does that answer

your question?

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I hate to do this to you, but you’ve been waiting so patiently with your

question almost the entire time. Would you like to ask?

ANNA: I was just wondering – my name is Anne – where do RIRs come into

play? I notice you just said gTLDs, but I know address space, all this

under IANA… I was just confused about the whole concept of where

they fall into place as far as ICANN is concerned. Would you be able to

answer that?

FABIEN BETREMIEUX: Sure. On this picture, the RIRs deal with IP addresses, and the

distribution of IP addresses in the networks, whereas here the gTLD

registry operators are dealing with names. This is a very different topic,

and I’ll let Janice talk to this point in a minute. You need to understand

that this is numbers and names.


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ANNA: I do understand that, but as far as I was concerned I was thinking that

maybe the ccTLDs fall under RIRs, which is names and addresses? So

where it all comes into place – that’s what I’m trying to figure out at this

point.

JOHN CRAIN: The RIRs, for those who don’t know the acronym, as you just said they’re

the people on the routing side, the IP addresses. Inside the ICANN policy

realm there’s something called the Address Supporting Organization,

and that’s where the RIRs and the IP addressing community interact with

the policy. The ccTLDs actually interact through something called the

ccNSO – country code names. They’re not linked to the RIRs, per se, at

all. They’re completely separate things.

If you look to Europe for example, the RIPE NCC is the Regional Internet

Registry there. They operate a root server but they really don’t have

much to deal with DNS in general, so it really is a separate world.

[OSAMA TAMIN]: Can I have a quick question? Okay. My name is [Osama Tamin

01:59:39]. I’m a Fellow from Palestine. I have a question regarding top‐

level domains and DNS servers. I think they are maintained by the IANA

organization, right? So the question is, are these deployed in different

places, in different locations in the world, to achieve some redundancy,

or are they just physically located in the USA?


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JOHN CRAIN: You said top‐level domain names servers. In my terminology, those are

those that answer for say .com or .uk. Those are managed by whoever

manages the TLD. Those are not managed by ICANN. If you’re in UK

then there’s a company called Nominet who manage .uk and they’re the

ones who deploy the name servers, but typically they do deploy them in

a topologically diverse, network diverse scenario. So even though the

country code might be in a specific country, their servers will typically be

spread around the world.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Great. Fabien had to go. Caitlin has agreed to stay and finish out our

slides here. If you just want to touch on them?

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: Sure. You may recognize this graphic from one of Rob’s slide. I just

want to say that the little red portion at the end, which says

“implementation” is also a really important part of the work that Fabien

and I do. You’ll notice that ideas and issues are submitted, public

comments go out, the gNSO Council votes on them, and then the Board

approves it. Once the Board approves it, it goes into implementation. A

really quick example, a recent example was someone came forward and

said that domain names were expiring and nobody knew.

So it went through this whole process and there’s a new policy now that,

among other things, registrars are required to send two notices before

the domain name expires to registrants. That was a product of the

whole PDP. I think we already touched on the new gTLD program so I’ll

gloss right over this one. The IDN side was actually going to be


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presented by Fabien, so I wasn’t prepared to talk about that, but I can

just say that IDNs have allowed TLDs to enter the second‐level domains

that are written in non‐Latin scripts to now be registered.

You can register a domain name in, for example, Chinese, Japanese, and

that was previously prohibited. Unfortunately I’m not going to be able

to answer questions on IDNs, but maybe John could do it, if there are

any.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Also, just be aware that there is a session, IDN Program Update on

Wednesday from 8:30‐9:45 am in the Santa Monica room. The experts

will be there for IDNs, so if you have those specific questions, of course

John, more than happy to hand over to you, but if you have other

specific questions, that will be the place to go to.

CAITLIN TUBERGEN: Again, this is dealing with IDNs, so I think I covered the extent of my

knowledge on those. Please attend the session if you’d like more

information on IDNs. If anyone has any questions on policy

implementation or any other registrar, registry related questions?

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you very much Caitlin. This information is at the ICANN Booth.

We have a handout on enabling a multi‐lingual Internet, in various

languages. That, along with other collateral, is at the ICANN Booth for

you to pick up. Also, let me encourage you to ask the folks at the Booth

to walk you through the website. One of the things that’s underutilized


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there, we’re handing out paper, but we have a monitor, we bring up the

website. We can show you where the information is on the DNS

Industry Engagement Team, registry, registrar, the constituencies and

stakeholder groups that are supporting these implemented policies.

It’s right there. We’re happy to train you into it and show you how to

navigate better through our website. We do have a Google search at the

top of our website, which is a good tool to have if you’re not really sure

where to find what it is that you're looking for. Caitlin, thank you very

much. With that, John and Steve, I’ll let you introduce yourselves. I

know what John and Steve do. John tells Steve what to do and he does

it, so it works really well. John is our Security, Stability and Resiliency

Officer. Introduce yourselves please, John and Steve.

JOHN CRAIN: I’m going to introduce myself really quickly and then hand over to my

colleague. I’m John Craig. I’m the Chief SSR Officer. The acronym’s

easier than the full name. I run a small group inside ICANN that focuses

on not necessarily security of ICANN’s infrastructure, so the office

network, but actually looking at the identifier systems, the DNS, routing,

IP addresses, system numbers, and things that affect the SSR of those

systems. I’m going to hand over to my colleague. I’ve got a bit of a cold

so I’m going to let Steve do all the talking.

STEVE CONTE: I think it’s payback. I was sick a couple of weeks ago at the LACTLD and

make John do the lion’s share of talking. Could I get a handheld please?

How many of you think that hotel chairs are designed by really evil


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people? I’m going to stand for a little bit. I’m Steve Conte. I’m kind of

new, kind of old to the organization. I started in 2002 but I left in 2008

and went to the Internet Society, and then John hired me back this April.

We’re part of the SSR Team. This is for the Internet identifier systems.

We don’t do anything as far as the organization security goes. We have

a robust IT team that works on the organizational security of ICANN.

We don’t necessarily go chase spam or any of that stuff. We’re looking

for how unique identifiers on the Internet are either misused or abused

and to check and monitor the health of those identifier systems. That

was a whole bunch of buzzwords. SSR can mean many things to many

people, and the key word here is that we watch the health of those

identifiers systems. What does that really mean? You can’t really

quantify health. Am I healthy, or am I sick as a dog, like John is?

To us, the health of the Internet, or the identifier systems, is is it acting

in a predictable manner that it’s been designed to act in, and is it not

being abused or misused? There are some other aspects of that too, but

that’s primarily the key feature. We look at the identifier systems on the

Internet, which is AS numbers, IP addresses. Much of the list that Leo

spoke about in the IANA, well all of them, are unique identifiers on the

Internet. However, most of the abuse of those identifier systems fall

into two categories – IP addressing and DNS. That’s the majority of our

work focuses on.

We have four main components to our remit. We’ve worked with this

aspect ever since the creation of ICANN. John you were 2000, 1999

when you started? So John’s been in the organization a long time and

has taken a lot of this on throughout the history of ICANN. At the end of


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last year we formalized it into its own teams in the department. We are

six people – John Crain, Dave Piscotello, Rick Lamb, myself, Tomofumi

Okubo, Carlos Alveres, and we have a shared resource with one of the

GSE people. We focus on four different things mostly. We focus on

threat awareness and preparedness, trust‐based collaboration, analytics

and capability building.

Now, as far as the threat awareness and preparedness goes, we actively

engage with global actors who monitor the DNS health. Although we do

some monitoring, we’re in a unique position that ICANN runs the root

servers, so we have access to root server data that we can monitor and

watch. However, there are some good people out there doing a lot of it

and that have much better resources that we do. RIPE NCC, one of the

RIRs, has a program to monitor the global DNS and the root servers on

that. So we actively engage with those types of groups as well.

We exchange threat intelligence with other parties as well. A big piece

of what SSR does is maintain the human connection and the human

networks with other groups. We want to make sure that the right

people are looking at the right data or the right threats at any given

time. Those right people may not be inside of ICANN. They might, but

there’s no guarantee. So we make sure that we keep a human network

going between operators and law enforcement, public safety,

organizations such as RIPE NCC that does monitoring, and we exchange

information as needed on that.

We participate in response to threats or attacks against identifier

systems. How many people think nothing ever bad happens on the

Internet? Two. How many people think there are some kind of bad


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things that happen? Everyone throws around the term cybercrime and

all that. In most instances, there’s an aspect to the Internet usage on

almost any kind of crime that’s out there these days. Unless somebody’s

breaking into my house, they might have used Google to get there,

Google Maps or something.

But we’re looking at how abusing or misusing the DNS can affect certain

badness – be it cybercrime, be it a bad registrar, be it a bad registrant

who’s doing that, be it a botnet or some kind of bot attack or spam

attack or things like that. We don’t necessarily go after the bad guys

themselves, but we’re looking at how they’re using these identifier

systems to do the nefarious work that they do. We look for DNS

vulnerability. In fact John has been in two days of meeting with OARC,

which I don’t know the acronym on. They’re basically a group of DNS

operators, right?

JOHN CRAIN: OARC is the DNS Operations Analysis and Research Center. We’re an

organization. I’m on the Board of that group. We do research into the

DNS, mainly operators.

STEVE CONTE: We also work on trust‐based collaboration. A lot of these fall hand‐in‐

hand with each other, so there’s overlap to some of these aspects. We

work very closely with our GSE Team, Chris, Albert, and a couple of other

people were out there today. They represent to us what the regional

needs are of the Internet and the needs of that community. We work

closely with them. Janice mentioned that they have strategic plans that


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are built by the community. We look at that. We look at what piece of

SSR engagement there needs to be – either training or engagement of

some other aspect.

We utilize that. We view the GSE Team as one of our primary

customers, per se. We do have relationships with other organizations

outside of ICANN, and we maximize those relationships, both internally

and externally, to help mitigate misuse of the DNS. How to mitigate but

also identify misuse and abuse of the DNS and other identifier systems

such IP addressing and stuff. We work to remove obstructions or

circumvent conflicts. Let’s say there is some bad guy working.

Earlier today the SOPA and PIPA piracy thing – let’s say somebody’s

selling some fake Gucci bags somewhere and they need to take that

domain down for some reason. Instead of what SOPA and PIPA would

have done would just be say, “The government has a right to go do it.”

As Leo said, we produce lies. We work with both sides; the registrar or

registry, and the agency in question, to try and get the right questions

answered prior to any action, to mitigate badness on the Internet. In

some ways, it’s good.

There are so many different laws that can be involved, across

international borders, that it makes it really difficult to understand what

questions need to be answered in order to get some kind of court action

or some kind of legal action behind that. So we interface on that. We’re

involved with a lot of the security and operations groups that are on the

Internet – the anti‐phishing, anti‐spam, anti‐crime. Again, much to

John’s dismay, we’re not allowed to carry badges or wear guns.


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We don’t get the bad guys, but we help those who do to identify which

questions are the right questions to be asking, what should be put on a

court order in order to take action, what a registry/registrar should be

asking to make sure that they are recognizing their legal boundaries too

on that. We do participate in some coordinated security actions. Is

anyone not familiar with what a botnet is? It’s where a whole bunch of

infected computers act as a controlled population that can attack

servers or do other bad things.

In the case of a botnet, there are some things inside of a botnet where

they’re going to go and talk to a command and control server. In that

command or control server, if it’s just one, or if it’s my son who built a

botnet or whatever, he’s probably going to say, “One server, one

domain name and that’s it, mwahaha, I can rule the world!” But in a real

life environment, a lot of those botnets now are really smart and they

use algorithms to determine what domain they’re going to go to, what

the command and control server is. Those can change very quickly. It

could be every day, it could be every hour, and those algorithms go and

determine what the domain is.

The developer of that botnet, of that network, has gone and

preregistered those domains, so when the law enforcement comes in

they find the botnet and they find the command and control server and

they want to take it down. The domains might span multiple registries

or multiple registrars, and that kind of action that needs to happen in

order to remove that botnet command center needs to be coordinated

across possibly multiple law enforcement, possibly using Interpol or

some other international organization to help that.


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We help facilitate that and work with the parties involved to make sure

that the right questions are being asked, the coordination is taking place,

the mitigation of what’s going to take place. Do you take the domain

down? Do you redirect it to do analytics on it? There’s all kinds of

questions that you have to ask behind actually turning off the domain,

so we help with providing expert guidance on that. We will be working

on analytics to help develop metrics and analytics for the identifier

systems. Again, organizations like the RIPE NCC and others have been

doing this type of work for some time.

We’re just getting into it. We just got our full‐time person on that.

Actually, we have two people on that now. We’ll start and look at that.

One aspect is just what DNS is doing. Again, we have access to L root

data. We can look at what is trending as far as what’s being asked to a

root server. We’re not looking to see who’s asking a specific question.

We’re looking to see how many people are looking for a domain that

doesn’t exist, or a TLD that doesn’t exist. We’re going to work with

other organizations to help build an interesting picture on that.

As we identify abused or misused domain names, we’re also looking to

see where those domain names are being registered at. Is there a

trending within the registrar community that a bad guy can go and get

domains easier from Registrar A versus Registrar B, and how can we

approach that registrar as ICANN and say, “Hey, we’re seeing this trend,

let’s see what we can do to help circumvent to make sure the bad guy

doesn’t get domains as easily.” Finally we work on capability building.

Since 2003 we’ve been doing work with Internet Society and with

Network Startup Resource Center, NSRC, to do various DNS trainings.


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Throughout the years we’ve built other workshops and trainings as well,

including registry operations, DNSSEC. We’re working with the law

enforcement and public safety community in doing how they can look at

find abuse in the DNS. Again, in a legal fashion they’ve got to build their

case before they can take action. So we’re helping show them the tools

and the things they need to help build a case of malware that they

found, or some other illegal activity that’s utilizing the DNS to facilitate

that illegal activity.

Then we work with knowledge transfer. We’re very big on train the

trainer. We’re six people. We’re one person when it comes to DNSSEC

training internally. We have partners, but we’re looking at how can we

build a network of trainers across the globe who can help facilitate this

training and help build that skillset up – not just DNSSEC but a lot of

what ICANN works on. Do you want to add anything? That’s it. I tried

to catch up. I don’t know how close we are. I’m open for questions.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I feel badly. I feel like our SSR Team is out of luck here on their health.

Thank you guys for struggling through this.

EVE: Hi, I’m Eve. I work Lawrence Berkeley Lab up in Berkeley. I have kind of

a naïve question about registration of domain names, regarding the

automated or semi‐automated registration of lots of garbagy domain

names that we’ve seen. Is that in fact contrary to a written policy? Do

you get involved with that?


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JOHN CRAIN: I don’t think it’s contrary to any policy. By garbage names are you

talking about random characters?

EVE: Yes.

JOHN CRAIN: Yes, so a lot of that is actually botnet stuff, especially the random

character stuff. One of the things we do get involved in is the issue of

DGAs or domain generation algorithms that are used inside this

malware. We ourselves aren’t into reverse engineering. We’re not into

dissecting malware. If anybody here is thinking about doing that, go find

a professional. It’s not good stuff to play with if you don’t know what

you’re doing. We know just enough to be dangerous, so we don’t do

that.

But once a DGA or a piece of malware has been reverse engineered and

we have the DGA ourselves, what we will do is we’ll work with the

registries and we’ll try and block those registrations on the day they’re

to be registered or the day they’re to be used, or in advance. So there is

no real policy against doing automatic generation. Domainers and

people, they do this all the time, and people have businesses doing

these. The random character stuff is interesting because it really does

not seem to have any legitimate purpose.

If we passed a policy to stop that, the bad guys would just do something

else, so it’s a big of a Whack‐A‐Mole. Unfortunately that’s just the way

the world works. Yes, we see that. Most of the DGAs tend to use these


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random or semi‐random character strings, sometimes up to 30

characters long, and there’s really no purpose for those.

STEVE CONTE: It’s really a shot in the dark too. There’s no way to determine that what

a seemingly randomly generated domain might be used for bad

purposes. So unless you’re following that, like John said, one random

string of characters to me might be garbage, but it could be some super

cool acronym to someone else, who decided to register that name. So

it’s really hard from our human perspective to look. You can suspect.

You can say, “That one might be bad,” but there’s no way just by looking

at it to say authoritatively, “This is bad, we’re going to take it down.”

SPEAKER: Thank you for that presentation. Building on the questions that you

were just addressing, if you can identify a certain set of botnet names as

malicious, perhaps a string of characters that don’t make sense, do you

report to a registrar or registry that you have these names identified? Is

there any obligation they would have to take them down or prevent

them from being re‐registered perhaps?

JOHN CRAIN: Interestingly, there is a statement or a request from the NGPC, which is

one of our many committees, about dealing with security threats in TLDs

and about a requirement to examine, measure these, and possibly take

action. So there is work going on in that area. Typically, we won’t find

those ourselves. Typically what happens is we act as a third party.

Somebody will come to us. It could be law enforcement, it could be a


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member of some security firm, and they will reach out to us. What we

will typically do is we’ll look at what they’re asking and we’ll figure out

where the choke points are.

Normally the first question we’ll always ask is, “What are you trying to

do?” If you ask somebody, a typical law enforcement officer, the

conversation usually goes, “We want it to go away.” We’ll say, “What

does that actually mean? What are you actually trying to do? Do you

want that website to disappear? Do you want that name to disappear?

Are you looking for attribution? Do you want somebody to go to jail?

Do you have a case here?” We have these conversations with them to

try to figure out what it is they want.

Some things you do you need to do at a registrar, and some things you

do you need to do at the registry. When it’s a large amount of names

that will be used in the future, there’s nothing to really do at a registrar

there because nobody owns that name yet, nobody’s registered that

name. So then we’ll typically work with the registries. Most of the

registries have security personnel. Most of the registrars have security

personnel, and we work with them to figure out what the correct action

is.

BEN TOWN: Hi, my name is Ben Town, and I’m curious what your relationship is with

computer emergency response teams, and also with the cyber defense

arms of military forces?


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JOHN CRAIN: CERTs, we are a member of an organization called FIRST, which is the

International Incident Responders Group. We have an internal CERT

ourselves, we work closely with CERTs. Typically, they are the

organizations that have the skillsets. Not all CERTs but a lot of CERTs will

have forensic people and people that can do reverse engineering.

They’ll have relationships that we may not have, so we do work very

closely with them. On the military side of it, we really have no

relationships with any country in that realm.

We work with law enforcement, what we call public safety people, and

we work with those internationally. We work with Interpol. We work

with any law enforcement in any country who comes and talks to us.

Our main goal, when dealing with what the law enforcement is doing, is

making sure that they understand what they’re doing, because often

they do not understand the industry. They definitely don’t understand

DNS and how it works. So we spend a lot of time with law enforcement.

There’s actually going to be some law enforcement meetings here on

Tuesday that will be open, a public safety community.

So we work with law enforcement and government agencies, often to

try and ensure that they don’t do collateral damage. If any of you follow

some of the things that happen around take downs of removals of

names, there have been cases in the past where agencies have gone and

said, “We just want to stop this. Take away this name,” and then the

name is not one site, but it may be a blog site with thousands of users.

One of the things we do is we step in and go, “Whoa, what are you

trying to do? This is what will actually happen if you do this.” Then they

go, “Oops, that’s not what we want.” So that’s the kind of role we play.


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KAKA: My name is Kaka from Nigeria. Is there any policy in place, for example

if a particular registrar with a ccTLD has to organize an online

infrastructure or application and another registry in a different ccTLD

tried to take advantage of the [unclear 02:29:28] and an attempt to

register a domain – though it didn’t go that way – but is there any policy

in place to protect or take action against that exploit? Do you get my

question?

JOHN CRAIN: I’m not sure I understand exactly the exploit. Run it by me again.

KAKA: For example, if there’s a weakness within the infrastructure, there is an

opening for that ccTLD, the weakness is around there. So another

registry in a different ccTLD, for example I’m from Nigeria, the ccTLD of

.ng, there’s a weakness. Another ccTLD, for example .tz in Tanzania tried

to take advantage of that weakness and register a domain at .ng from

their own ccTLD. Is there any policy in place to take action against that

exploit?

STEVE CONTE: With the ccTLDs it’s an interesting… What I’m hearing you ask is is there

any policy to protect certain domains with the TLD. Is that what you’re

asking?


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KAKA: My question is assuming I’m a ccTLD registry of .ng, and I have a [unclear

02:30:47] existing within my own network. Another registry in a

different ccTLD identifies this [unclear] and takes advantage of it – tries

to register a domain within .ng, my own ccTLD, though the registry is

existing in a different ccTLD.

STEVE CONTE: That’s going to be a question of the registration policies of that ccTLD.

Some ccTLDs are unique in that they’re not necessarily bound by any

kind of registration or registry agreement with ICANN. They’re

recognized through an MOU or some kind of bilateral agreement, or

recognition between ICANN and the operator of that ccTLD. There’s no

way we can say there’s a policy within that. Some ccTLDs have very

strict policies that you have to be a resident of that country in order to

register the ccTLD.

Some ccTLDs use that to monetize and make that something that as a

country they can make money out of. .tv, Tuvalu Islands is a great

example of that, where they’ll allow anybody outside or inside that

country code to register, because it’s considered an income to the

country. Some other ccTLDs are more restrictive about that. Some

charge for registrations, some don’t. It depends on the cc. There’s

really no way to protect or stop one customer to register into a

particular ccTLD, unless there’s policies developed by that specific TLD to

protect or allow it.


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JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: I just have to say we are going to have to wrap this, because we do have

our presenters for the next session. It’s going to start to tumble

downhill. Albert?

ALBERT DANIELS: We see this a lot. The ccTLDs have different policies to the gTLDs. What

I will say to you and to the others who may have similar concerns is that

the ccNSO is a grouping of peers or persons who manage ccTLDs, and

believe it or not most of the ccTLDs have similar problems. By

participating in those meetings you will be able to exchange with other

individuals who may be having the same problem as you, or someone

who may be able to guide you on how to deal with this.

JANICE DOUMA‐LANGE: Thank you. I am going to wrap this up. John and Steve I want to say

thank you. If you have a question for them, go ahead and follow them

out. Very quickly, just to wrap up this session and move onto the

breakout sessions to find out more about your sector, I just want to go

ahead and point everybody to the ICANN 51 full schedule. To participate

remotely while you’re here in the physical room you can be in one room

and open up the Adobe Connect by clicking onto the session that you’d

like to peek into.

If you’re in the main meeting hall here and the high interest topics

tomorrow are happening, but you want to peek into one of the other

sessions, just go to the calendar, click onto that session, make sure your

computer is on mute, and you can follow a transcript and what’s going

on in another room. You can participate remotely while participating


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physically in another room. This is the ICANN schedule. You follow it

while you’re here.

You follow it if you’re virtually following. This is where you’re going to

find all of the transcripts and the recordings and the translations. If

there has been live stream in various languages, you’ll be able to find the

translations to that transcript within a couple of weeks after the ICANN

Meeting. Just a couple of ideas for each day, just to throw to you. The

Welcome Ceremony, Fadi’s opening, is at 8:30 am tomorrow, where he

sets the tone for the topics of the week. For our techies there is a

ccNSO‐drive tech day, all day. You’ll find that on the schedule. We

talked about the IANA – Who What and Why.

The SO AC‐led high interest topic is taking those topics such as the NTIA

transition from a viewpoint of the SOs and the ACs. It will be a

moderated discussion here in the main rooms. Very interesting. 10:30‐

12:00 pm. Community members will be mostly in this room during this

discussion, open mic to the SOs and ACs. The Latin America and

Caribbean space at ICANN, if you are from LAC and you’re attending

here, that is a great session to go to to learn more about how we are

using our space here at ICANN, from a regional perspective.

The Global Domains Division, our new gTLDs, that update. Again,

someone mentioned studying. You will want to prepare a little bit for

that. Go to the GDD websites. Perhaps start to take a look at some of

the things that are going on. Open up that website during that

discussion so that you can follow along with acronyms and other things

that you may not be caught up on, if this is your first time through. An

update on the new gTLD program next rounds. Fadi alluded to some of


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that earlier. What are we going to do better, smarter? What is your

input into making the next gTLD round another type of success from the

one we’ve already had? Of course I’ve talked about the DNSSEC for

Everyone.

Constituency Day, again, can be very confusing. It’s up to you to take

control of it. You can go from place to place and taste a bit. Remember

this – what’s happening at ICANN, whether it’s NTIA transition, new

gTLDs, WHOIS, what’s happening there is happening across all the

communities. It’s about how they are talking about it. How are they

working with it? We’re all working on the same stuff, it’s just from the

different perspective – a business perspective, a technical perspective, a

civil society perspective, a government perspective – but we’re all

talking the same issues.

Keep that in mind as you’re going to the different rooms. Again, the

only problem is you’re playing catch‐up because they’re in monthly

meetings all the time, so you’re going to play a little bit of catch‐up on

that. Find a buddy. Someone who you see speaking at the session,

educated about it. During a break say, “Hey, could I sit next to you?

Could you share with me a bit when the session resumes?” We’re a

community and staff. That’s our job. That’s what we like to do. We like

you to be interested.

Wednesday, Internet governance update. That’s normally very popular

amongst the beginners or those coming from the Internet governance

forum or field, now coming to ICANN. The IDN Program Update we

talked about. I can tell you this – Dr Sarmad Hussain who was a Fellow,

now is Manager of the IDN Program at ICANN. he is looking for


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volunteers to help with other scripts that we have not yet been able to

engage with from an IDN perspective.

We are always looking for volunteers. [Murella] talked about it. We

have 20 people in a Working Group and the work is demanding a

minimum of 30 or 40 people to be interested in different people taking

the pen and writing and helping to work. If you’re interested in IDNs we

are looking for new blood. The DNSSEC Workshop is kind of at a

technical level, but if that’s somewhere you’d like to go, go. The GAC

Open Forum always engaging, because the governments are lively about

their opinions and what’s happening. They’re talking to the Board,

they’re talking to the community.

We are having a transition this meeting. We will be electing a new Chair

and a new Vice Chair of the GAC, so we’re in an interesting place. I

mentioned the Strategic and Operating Planning, if you’d like to get a

little more involved in the future of the next one year and five years.

The Enhancing ICANN Accountability is a hot topic. We’re constantly

looking for volunteers to help us in those Working Groups. The

NomCom, who are scouring the globe all the time looking for talent. You

do not need to be the person that they’re looking for, but you know

someone who could fill a Board seat or who could fill a Council seat on

the gNSO or At‐Large. We’re talking about thinking openly about who

could engage with our Board or with our Councils.

The NextGen at ICANN is students of higher learning, here from the

North American region. We have three sessions during the week of

different presentations from community members and staff, culminating

in a presentation from each of those 12 selected students on Thursday,


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their impressions of ICANN. It’s a neat perspective from this brand new

group. Public Forum is all afternoon. Here we’ll open up all the walls.

It’s a fantastic experience. Since 2007 we’ve toned down a bit, but it’s

an opportunity for the community to talk directly to the Board, to our

global leaders and executive and senior staff – asking the hard questions

and hopefully getting the answers. If they don’t, they can step back up

to the mic and ask again.

If you would like to get up to the mic at the Public Forum you will need

to take a look at the time. If it says two minutes for your comment, it is

two minutes for your comment. I ask you to please type on a tablet, on

your phone, on a piece of paper, on your computer. Be ready. Time it.

Stand in line. Present the comment with your first name, last name. If

you’re speaking on your own behalf it’s, “I’m speaking on my own

behalf.” If you have the permission from your corporation or where you

report to, you may say that you’re speaking on their behalf. Do not say

so if you do not have that permission.

Then we do have our open Board meeting, which normally we do not

get to attend. It’s an open Board meeting, going through the resolutions

of the week. Fun. Music night on Tuesday night. It’s back. It’s a time to

let your karaoke go wild. Thursday we do a wrap up, Board, staff,

community members. Remember that hallways are great opportunities

to grab someone: “I’m a Newcomer, I see that you're staff. I see that

you’re Board. I see that you’re a community leader I saw speaking

earlier today.” Grab us.

If we’re busy we’re going to say, “I have a presentation, I’ve got to run.

Catch me, here’s my card.” Our job is to engage you as Newcomers, so


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stop us, get us engaged, keep getting engaged. Pick up this PowerPoint

from Newcomer session again. Go to the Booth to ask for more

information about what’s happening in ICANN, and remember, any type

of participation is welcome. Blog us, Tweet us, react in public comment.

Bring what’s happening at ICANN back to your region, back to your

community. Ask us back for answers if you are confused when you

leave, but we’d love you to join.

I thank you all for your amazing stamina today. I thank our presenters, I

thank our interpreters, our tech team. I know it’s kind of a whacky day.

Thank you all very much and have a great week.

CHRIS MONDINI: Now is an opportunity for you to begin the all‐important building of your

network here. For those of you that want to stretch your legs and get to

know a few of your fellow stakeholders, we have a large room and we

have representatives in each corner of the room from the stakeholder

categories to which I referred earlier. I see we have an array of leaders

from the civil society stakeholder category here. Up here to this part of

the room. Jean‐Jacques, will you raise your hand? He’s my colleague in

the Europe region and we’ll be greeting you there.

Here in this corner, if you’re a private sector, business, for‐profit

organization and would like to meet other people from that stakeholder

group and plan your week ahead, please join Ricardo here. In the back

corner near our interpreters we have some technical experts and

technical stakeholders. If you are an engineer or a network operator or

interested in those subjects that we discussed today, please join Patrick


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there and you’ll meet some of your technical community that are joining

here for this meeting.

Then in this corner by the door we have governments. If you’re from a

regulator, a government organization or agency, my colleague Nigel

Hickson who you heard from earlier today is there to greet you and

answer your questions. Take as little or as long as you like, to spend

some time and hopefully build some relationships and help you plan

your week ahead. We look forward to answering your questions. Thank

you very much.

[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]

Documents

ICANN51-LA Sun12Oct2014-Newcomer Welcome Session-en · LOS ANGELES – Newcomer Welcome Session Sunday, October 12, 2014 – 10:00 to 17:00 ICANN – Los Angeles, USA JANICE DOUMA